


Half Jack

by faantine (BreathingSpace)



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: (although he doesn't appear for A While just so we all know), First World War AU, M/M, SLOWEST OF BURNS!!!!, Trans William Bush, i am a Dumb Bitch that loves WWI and monsters and hornblower what can i say, lovecraftian eldritch au, monster fighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 19:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16501658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreathingSpace/pseuds/faantine
Summary: “Sub-Lieutenant Kennedy. Archie.”Horatio took the hand. "Sub-Lieutenant Hornblower.”“Hornblower?” Archie grinned. “Fuck me, that’s unfortunate.”





	1. Chapter 1

Now they had been two and a half hours on the boat, and Horatio was just beginning to see their destination through the sea-rain. The ever-present mist of fine rain – the sort which seemed to hang in the air and soaked right through- settled on his face to such coldness he could feel his skin shrinking away from it, contracting red and raw. He knotted his hands in his useless gloves once more.

The _Justinian_ lay at berth in Spithead, sheltered from both the worst of the weather and the sea beneath. Every now and then a ripple of precipitation would render it visible. It was a squat, ugly little thing which hung half underwater. Even at anchor it was trailing smoke. It looked like a steam engine had come detached, thought Horatio, with some venom. His experience with ships thus far had been the few mercy ships he’d happened to glance being slipped free of the Thames in the early morning. If that was all the acquaintance they came to, it would be no great loss.

The woman in front of him moved her pipe to the corner of her mouth in order to better shout at her companion in utterly incomprehensible West Country. A clammy hand tapped him from behind. It made him shudder, like a nerve going sour. A voice climbed into his ear.

“We’re not too far from ‘er now. Polly reckons another five minutes or so.”

Horatio nodded, biting his tongue. He was determined to appear as stoic as possible. The fewer words than came out of his mouth, the fewer could be wrong. He felt a surge of envy for the two VAD women either side of him. Although he supposed they would be Navy now. Coarse, with salt-stiffened hair and big hands. The woman in front – Polly – had two tattoos wrapped around her huge, visible forearms. Every spare inch of Horatio’s skin was hidden away behind as many layers as he could get between him and the sea. He could ask them, ask if their particular volunteer detachment had merged with the Women's Royal Naval Service yet, but he didn’t. Decided it could be a topic of conversation on the Justinian. He highly doubted they could cross that boiling swell in five minutes.  He blinked against the backdraft of pipe-smoke into his eyes.

The sea groaned.

The woman behind him grinned. “Nothin’ to worry about, my love. Not for us, at least.”

There was a particular adage about the guns in Flanders, how they could be heard from London when the wind was right. What would happen to the guns of a ship, he thought. What would happen when they sank.

All at once, the finer points of the Justinian hove into view. The sea mist had disappeared somewhat around its bulk (or maybe they were just that far out to sea), leaving behind it a screaming spindrift off that unfeeling metallic side. There was another deep groan, followed by a subtle but unmistakeable shudder. The feeling something was terribly wrong. The woman at the back of the boat tapped his shoulder again and pointed silently to their left. He allowed his eyes time to adjust to the water and the mid-afternoon gloom. All that he could see was grey, the sky and the sea and the ships. The wide spread of it and the poor visibility it yielded obscured anything that might have been a landmark. Even the Isle of Wight lay in an inglorious bulk almost utterly indistinguishable. He couldn’t see anything, until he thought he could see something. Then it was gone.

“Submarine,” came the burr from behind. “One of them new E-classes.”

Horatio trained his eyes on the horizon again, determined to rake out a view. He could see nothing, which made it worse. The image of it slinking off, deep and dark beneath them.

“Hornblower!”

Horatio’s neck snapped up.

“That’ll be your welcome, lad,” said Polly, pulling an oar into the little boat and using her free hand to pull them in closer. “I’ve got this end of the scramble. Been a pleasure. Good luck, Sub-Lieutenant.”

Horatio nodded, and tried to stand. He decided that standing would not be viable in this water.

“Jump!” Came the same distant voice from the top of the scramble net. “You’ll be alright!”

Horatio clenched his teeth together.

“He’s not wrong,” said the voice of the woman behind him, whom he’d never learnt the name of. “Worst comes to the worst, we’ll fish you out.” She clapped him heavily on the back, which seemed to serve to propel him further forward than he’d like to go.

He tried to raise himself again, tentatively, determined not to look like how he felt in front of his new companions. Who he’d be ensconced with for who could tell how long.

The rope was salty and rough. “You just climb!” called Polly over his shoulder, one of her big, strong hands attached to the netting alongside his. “Ain’t as far as it looks!”

He doubted that.

The metal was bruisingly cold. The first contact skinned all the skin from his knuckles, the soft pads of his fingers red raw from where they held the rope and where he’d held them so tight to each other against his poorly knit gloves. He felt a faint pang of disgust at himself and the obvious lack of seamanship and masculinity he showed. Then he bit his tongue and resolved to climb and said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

The enormous glut of the ship served to shelter him from the worst of the wind scything in from the Channel. The height, which he’d found so repellent at first, may well be for the best, he decided. It couldn’t be too far to fall if we sank. He hadn’t even got his chest. It was just his own sorry self he had to haul up. Wet and slightly wind-lagged. Minor wool-soaking. If he was in the Army he’d be able to sit beside a fire in the Officers’ Mess. God knows what the Navy had in lieu. A boiler. The engine room.

“That’s it, it’s not much farther!” The voice from the deck seemed a lot closer, now. Horatio chanced a glance up. Not far. Still too far. The metal slipped against his hands, grating on the wet neophyte skin beneath it. A hot burst of energy materialised in his stomach to propel him, through discomfort and hatred alone, to the top of the scramble net.

A firm set of hands grasped the back of his overcoat and helped to heave him aboard. He landed, undignified, in a heap alongside the ship’s low walls. The deck was wooden, he noticed. Somehow he hadn’t been expecting that.

“Oh, bugger. Are you alright?” The owner of the voice squatted next to him, almost invisible between the weather and the dark shadow his peak cap cast with what little remained of the light. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine.” Horatio picked himself up, slipping again on the wet wood. He dug his feet in, the heels of his new boots sticking.

“Takes some time,” said the voice, utterly incongruous with its surroundings. “Never easy to get your legs right, even if you’ve been at sea before. Every ship reacts differently to the swells. She’s got her own set of quirks. You’ll come to realise.” He held out his hand, beaming.

“Sub-Lieutenant Kennedy. Archie.”

Horatio nodded soberly and took the hand. The wet wool of his charity gloves squeezed water out over the fingers of Archie’s. Regulation leather. Soft as butter.

Archie either did not notice or did not mind. He kept his smile, which only made his round face look more boyish.

“Sub Lieutenant Hornblower,” said Horatio

“Hornblower?” Archie grinned. “Fuck me, that’s unfortunate.”

“Horatio,” said Horatio.

“Horatio,” repeated Archie. Then he let go of Horatio’s hand and said brightly, “Welcome to purgatory!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Few Notes:  
> \- This a First World War au because a) I know far more about the first world war than I ever will about the Napoleonic Wars and those are Facts. That said, I am not a naval historian and am likely to be a Fool.  
> \- I love eldritch and I've read too much Temeraire. Think of this as like a First Watch-style undertaking  
> \- my Dumb Ass decided to do Nano a day too late so. uhhhh. enjoy whatever this is I guess.  
> \- This starts in 1915, roughly alongside the Battle of Loos and after Dogger Bank. Obvious canon-divergence aside, Horatio and Archie are Sub-Lieutenants instead of midshipman, because midshipmen by this stage were officer cadets moreso than actually out on active service.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey lads!! so I (decent, honest, hardworking) was trying to find the naval abbreviation for ‘sub lieutenant’ because ‘subbie’ isn’t valid for… obvious reasons, and apparently the most commonly used one is s.l.u.t  
> SLUT  
> (Sub Lieutenant Under Training)  
> slut......  
> this is all gonna sound a lot more racy than god intended.  
> also, as you may have read between The Lines, this is my NaNo, so it's all unbeta-d and pretty much unproofed. This bastard is just hurgling into the abyss. Sorry, everyone.

Horatio, while attempting to shift his weight from one foot to the other, glanced up at Archie. The switch in his concentration almost caused him to lose his balance.

 

“Surely it can’t be that bad?”

 

Archie cocked his head, still grinning. “Come on. Let me show you to your berth, at least”.

 

He pulled a door open - rust-encrusted and at total odds with the wooden deck. It had left deep gouges on the wet woodwork. All the while, Archie talked.

“You’re not too far from the back, with me. I think it’s the idea we should be stationed together. Not that that should usually be the case with the junior officers, but we’ve got half a dozen Marines on board and they’ve got to fit somewhere. So it’s the subalterns who take the cut, as per usual.” He held open another door, this one leading down a set of viciously spiralled stairs. Horatio put his foot on the first one, gingerly, and waited for Archie to overtake.

“You lead the way, I’ll point you out if you go too far wrong. Not that there are too many places to go. Ever been on a half-jack before?”

“I’ve never been - on a ship before,” said Horatio, pausing his speech to allow space for a particularly big wave. Archie didn’t seem to notice.

“Half-jack’s not a bad place to start. Big enough to be comfortable, not big enough to lose you in it. Did you have a chance to get on the ships of the line at Dartmouth? They’ve got a second and a third rate there. I spent half my bloody life up and down them. Of course, I heard they’re cutting the training time, so maybe they’ve taken out the on-decks. Not that it did a lot. That’s it, straight down. Strange choice for you to go into the Navy? Father a Navy man, is he?””

Horatio hoped his bitter silence would do instead of a reply.

“They wouldn’t accept me, at first. Got in on my third attempt. Not that there’s been a lot to see, Horatio. I just got in for the tail end of Dogger Bank and then it was time to go home again. We’ve been here since March.”

“Just, sitting here?”

Archie turned around and winked. “Bricks in the wall”

Half-jacks were modelled on the  _ Borodino _ class, with minimum specifications and maximum inconvenience. They were built low and ugly. They were also exceedingly cheap to produce en masse, Horatio supposed bitterly. Bricks in the wall, indeed. Union Jacks, Jacks-of-the-Line, Jack of all trades. Depending on whom you listened to.

Although he was still talking, Horatio imagined that he felt Archie’s disposition dissipate the further into the ship they got. They were deep here, he supposed. Not deep as below the waterline, as such, but deep into the workings of the ship. The engine room, the boilers. Somewhere where you might not want to be, if the worst came to the worst.

Archie stopped and knocked on another door to their left. They had, so far as Horatio could tell, all seemed to be identical. Archie met his eye and raised cocked his eyebrows once. He had visibly clenched his jaw.

“Gunroom,” he said. He didn’t explain why he knocked.

The door opened from the inside, rather than be opened by Archie himself. A good natured face appeared round it. “Archie!”

“Hi, Pete,” Archie replied, wrapping him in a loose, one-handed hug. “Look who I’ve got.”

Pete did, and his face didn’t change. Whether he wasn’t impressed or he didn’t care, Horatio didn’t know, and couldn’t seem to muster up the ability to care himself. It didn’t help the queasy fluttering of his stomach.

Anxious to sit down, Horatio took Archie’s silent hand wave as an invitation into the gunroom and sat rather hurriedly on the first chair he could manage to find. Satisfied he could use the excuse of taking the weight of his feet, at least, he allowed himself the minor luxury of scanning his surroundings, for what felt like the first time since he’d left the the Navy Board hours ago.

Like everything else he had seen thus far - and, he suspected, most things in the Navy as a whole - the ship’s anterior was coloured entirely in shades of grey. Two buzzing electrical lights sat embedded in the wall, augmented by three paraffin lamps swinging from the low ceiling. The chairs, which sat in odd clumps of three, one of which he was sitting in, were the same gunmetal grey. It looked like the entire ship had been outfitted had been welded out of one huge sheet. A symbolic attempt to vary the fittings was present in a large wardroom table, which took up almost every spare inch of viable floorspace and created a narrow moar in which all movement had to be undertaken. A seamap was half open, held down by two dinner knives and a tin mug.

“This him?”

Archie looked up from the position he’d let himself relax into, on the opposite side of Horatio in an almost perfect mirror. Now that his duty was done, he’d become very quiet. The one time that Horatio wished he would continue talking. Worse, Archie inclined his head towards Horatio. Pete redirected the question to him.

“You him?”

Horatio cleared his throat.

“By ‘him’....”   


“He’s the new subbie,” said Archie, apparently not all as silent as he looked.

Pete regarded him under his shadowed brow. “I thought so.”

Horatio didn’t know what to say. He gave Pete a tight smile.

“First time on a half-jack?”

“First time on a ship.”   


Pete sat heavily on the chair next to Archie. “Well, fuck me.”

Horatio had been expecting this. Archie put what appeared to be a warning hand on Pete’s leg. His demeanour, however, indicated he felt more or less the same. So, to be honest, did Horatio.

They let an uncomfortable silence pass through them.

Horatio coughed. “How… many are there?”

“Berthed here?”

Horatio, not sure entirely what he meant himself, nodded.

“The five of us. Senior officers at the top.”

Horatio allowed his gaze to drift to the pole in the corner of the room. Pete followed his gaze. “Wardroom’s above.”

Horatio nodded, as if this made sense.   


“I think he needs something to drink, Pete.”   


Horatio started, panicking about what would happen to his already frail stomach. “Oh, no please-”

Archie, not to be defeated, was already on his feet.

Amidst the general clutter of the room was a large, cast iron urn. It was wedged on top of a tiny sideboard, itself looking defeated in the shadow of the enormous table between him and it. There was a sink, he noted, and some used-looking cups. Horatio wondered vaguely where the water came from.

“Want it gunpowder?” asked Archie

“I… excuse me?”

Archie, pulling down the lever on the urn and letting a steaming stream of water hit what Horatio hoped was a teabag, turned to face him. His good natured expression, he noticed thankfully, hadn’t changed. “Do you want rum in it?”

“Oh. No, thank you.”

Archie exchanged a glance with Pete. Horatio did his best not to question it and to feel the indignant burn in his chest.

The cup was delivered to him. The tin made it too hot for Archie to hold in his bare hands, so he’d wrapped it in a teacloth, which he left with Horatio. “Milk and sugar are in there already,” he said apologetically. “They put them in at the source. Sorry.”

“Just sits there and stews,” said Pete. He offered Horatio a cigarette. Horatio took it, feeling like he ought to.

They sat and smoked in silence. Horatio wondered when his tea would be cool enough to drink. Tin mugs.

Archie was looking down at his feet. Pete, with his head back against the wall, was following the trajectory of his gaze to the ceiling. Horatio felt like he should say something.

In the end, Pete broke the silence.

“You been briefed yet?”

Horatio shook his head, firmly, once.

“You going to be?”   


“I- hope so.”

“So do I.”

They let the silence lapse again.

There was a metallic clanking from down the hall. They all listened to it grow until it coalesced itself at the door.

A man in sub-lieutenant’s epaulettes walked in, took a tin from the sideboard and left without saying a word.

The silence doubled in intensity. Horatio felt that he should question it, but if any time was wrong to, he supposed it would be this one. He caught his two companions looking at each other again. What relationship was it they had, he thought, where so little could be conveyed with a glance? As if they understood each other? Would he find himself a friend like that, or was it unique to them? Was it camaraderie bourne from mere time alone? From shared experiences?

Experiences. Those, more than anything, put the fear of God into him. The sea, the sea. The open sea. The worse things which happened. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and thought, unbidden, of that submarine which had slipped so easily beneath the waves.

Archie and Pete were speaking in low voices. Archie got up. He beamed at Horatio.

“Come on, then. Let me show you to your berth.”

Horatio followed him, feeling none more settled than he had done from when he first arrived on board. Archie took him back through the gunroom door, and Horatio’s heart sank at the thought of navigating those stairs again in reverse. However, Archie directed him left, and almost immediately stopped.

“Well. It’s not much. They never are.”

The room in front of them was stacked in three bunks, each screwed to the wall and rusty with sea water. High above and between two of them shone the weak dregs of the afternoon light. His sea chest, which he had almost forgotten about, was at the foot of one of them.

“You’re on the bottom, Horatio. I hope you don’t mind. We moved Styles up to the top. In case there’s any sort of-emergency in the night.”

The catch in his voice caught Horatio right in his insecurity.

“What do you mean by that?”   


“We’re at war, Mr. Hornblower. Anything could happen. Better to have three officers on duty immediately than two and one of them still struggling out of his bunk.”

“And this Styles doesn’t deserve the privilege because-?”

Archie blinked at him. “Oh, Styles. He isn’t an officer. There are too many beds for all of them so one of the more senior ratings berths with us. Else we’d waste a bed. He’s not a problem.”

“I wasn’t insinuating that he was,” said Horatio distractedly, taking in his surroundings. The bedclothes were made of rough wool, but the sheets themselves looked clean and serviceable enough. The ever-present fug of smoke was thicker here than in the gunroom.

Archie was surveying him out of the corner of his eye. “You seem to have a rather radical edge to you, Mr Hornblower.”

Horatio was rather taken aback. “Oh?”

Archie looked at him benevolently, appearing amused.

“Yes. I rather think that’s the impression I’m picking up from you.”

“Well.” said Horatio.

Archie cracked a grin. “I’ll keep it in mind if I hear any rumblings of dissent. I’ll leave you get yourself unpacked; Pete and I will be in the gunroom, I daresay. Pop back in and finish your tea. I’ll take you up to number one later on. He’s expecting you to want some time to get yourself equated.”

Horatio nodded. He felt as if he’d done nothing except nod since his arrival.

Archie gave him a final smile and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Archie made his way quietly back down the corridor, doing his best not to draw attention to himself. Pete was still in the gunroom, looking up for his return, Archie supposed. His heart grew despite itself.

“Get him installed, did you?” asked Pete. Archie nodded, smiling.

“Taking him up to the captain after he’s had a chance to settle down a bit. Get used to it all.”

“I’ll do that Archie, you sit yourself down, for fuck’s sake. You’re not doing anyone any good running yourself ragged.”

“I’m _fine_ , Pete, I - like to keep myself busy.”

“There’s a line between ‘busy’ and overwork”

“I am most reliably informed  there is, yes.”

“Don’t you start that flippancy shit with me.”

Archie tried to smile at him. “Who says I’m starting anything with you?”

Pete, not to be taken in, fixed him with a stony glare, before giving in and running a hand through Archie’s hair.

“I want it noted than I’m not happy with this.”

“Taken on board, sub-lieutenant. Pending review.”

“Christ, Archie, you’re a nightmare.”

“I try my best to be, Pete. Now are you going to get me a cup of tea or am I going to have to run the risk of overtaxing myself by getting up to make one?”

“I’ll make you one, but I’ll spit in it.”

“I’m willing to take that risk, Pete.”

Pete manoeuvred himself around the tiny kitchenette, with his jaw visibly but good-naturedly clamped. “Of course, there are no biscuits.”

“Yes, I did notice that.”

“Do you think we should say anything? To Hornblower?”

“About what, Pete?”

Archie’s frank, open face almost broke Pete’s heart. “You know what, Archie,” he said gently.

“Why? What good would it do? The man is half petrified already. I’m not going to add to that.”

“And you think that’s the best thing?”

Archie stretched up and put his feet on the overlarge table. “No, I don’t. I think it’s the only viable course of action. Especially at the moment.”

“Are you about to tell me there’s a war on?”

“I might be,” Archie smiled again. Pete pushed his mug towards him, and nodded towards Horatio’s. “He coming back, is he?”

Archie nodded, his nose buried in his mug. He seemed to be able to drink it at whatever temperature it arrived. Pete supposed it was a skill. “Coming back after he’s finished unpacking. Not that I suppose there’s much to do.”

“Do you think he’s-”

“Sitting on his bed moping? Of course I do. It’s a rite of passage, is it not?”

Pete smiled wanly. “You’re so hard on yourself.”

“No more than anyone else. Do you think I should look in on him?”

“Leave him be. It’s the last chance he’ll get to be alone his whole professional life."

A muscle twitched in Archie’s jaw. Pete read it, with the attention of a man who knew his way home in the dark.

“He won’t, Archie.”

“I know.”

There was a knock at the door. Archie reached over to open it, stretching as far from his chair as he could. A smile slid back over his face like someone was painting it on with a roller.

“Horatio! You don’t always have to knock you know. I tend to use it as a precaution in case someone is standing behind the door. Pete never bothers."

Horatio, looking if anything paler and more clammy than he had before, smiled with his lips pressed tightly together and sat back down on his original chair. _Seasick_ , Archie noticed, with a small inward grin. _Who’d have thought_.

“You don’t have to finish that, you know,” he said, as Horatio toyed half heartedly with his mug of lukewarm tea. “It’ll take you a while to get used to, at any rate. Let me take you up to the Captain before dinner, at least. Help you feel more at home.”

Horatio nodded again, and unfolded himself. He was taller than optimum for naval service, Archie noted. His rather proud five foot eight allowed him to skitter around in the underbelly of the ship with only minimum concern for what happened to the top of his head. Hornblower must be over six feet. Thank God he wasn’t on a submarine. They seemed to be dropping standards like a thief through a floorboard the further into the war they got. The dragging of Captain Keene out of retirement hadn’t signalled it, the turn to neo-press ganging which Horatio seemed to have stemmed from seemed to hint at it more plainly than ever. Archie wondered how he’d managed to get here in the first place. However, he seemed to be picking his way back through the body of the ship relatively easily. Maybe there were hidden depths to him, after all.

“You seem to have a natural sense of direction blessed onto you, Mr Hornblower!”

Hornblower turned around and seemed to give him a real smile, albeit small. “It’s as you say, Mr Kennedy. There is a limit to the places one can get lost.”

“That is a very true adage, Horatio. May I call you Horatio?”

“Please do.”

“Only if you call me Archie.”

“It would be my pleasure, Archie.”

Archie paused, one hand on the ladder to the first deck. “I’m beginning to think my initial impression of you was wrong, Mr Hornblower. You seem a stander on ceremony.”

Hornblower, as he seemed to wont to do, responded with a half cock of the head and what may be read as a smile. “It would not be the first time I had given that impression by accident, Mr Kennedy.”

“By accident?” Archie smiled. “And there was me thinking it was so deliberately cultivated.”

“As I said, you would not be the first.”

“Radical family, have you?”

“None such of the sort, Kennedy.”

“Archie, please.”

“Archie. None such of the sort.”

“Well. I suppose that speaks of your opinion on the matter more concisely than I could. Horatio.”

Horatio, again. That wan, frustrating smile. “For you to decide, Archie.”

Archie bit the inside of his cheek. “Out of line for me to ask. You’re right.”

Hornblower didn’t answer.

Archie pushed on through the uncomfortable silence he had started. “This deck. It’s probably best if you go first- Anyway, this deck. You’ll hear it called a lot of things. ‘The Captain’s Deck’. ‘The Old Man’s’. Et cetera et cetera. All it means is that the Captain lives up here, and he's an old man. Which I’m sure you’ve gathered.” He just about stopped biting himself again. 

Horatio, meanwhile, was trying his best to keep steady on the ladder in front of Archie. He pulled himself to the top like a freezing man out of an ice hole.

“There we are!” said a cheery voice from behind. Archie. God damn him. “Move along- there we go. So!” Archie pulled himself up to his full, and somewhat diminutive height. “Now. The wardroom is just along here-, more or less where we’ve just come from. The damn rooms are on top of each other. There we are, Horatio, you lead the way. You seem to have nature’s gift here…”

Nature’s gift, thought Horatio bitterly. As if there were many he possessed. That infernally cheery voice kept pushing him on. Horatio pulled himself up to as full as his height would let him, under the roofing circumstances, and did his best to paint a sweet-looking smile on his face.

“I’m sure I don’t. Archie. I would feel far more at ease if you took the lead.”

Arche looked startled. _Good_ , thought Horatio. _Let him be_.

Archie overtook Horatio quietly, and beckoned him to follow, losing none of his previous friendliness, Horatio noted enviously. It came to the man like a duck to water. He hated the types. Irrationally, he supposed. As if that took away anything to do with how he felt. Were feelings not, by definition, irrational? Surely, the decades’, centuries’ worth of poetry and literature had something to say on the matter. Not one to have much to do with either, even he could say so. He was sure the likes of Archie with his undoubtedly Classical education, could set him right if that were not the case.

The door to the Captain’s chambers, or the wardroom, Horatio supposed he must call it now he was on a ship, looked much the same as the gunroom had. With his by far sub-par knowledge of ships and shipbuilding, he had pieced together himself the fact that the gunroom hadn’t been used to store guns of any sort. With he and Archie and the like, it was somewhere to relegate junior officers. The subalterns. They on whom the war was to be pinned, apparently. So the war dispatches said. The papers, or those in Bromley. Why he were to trust that Bromley had anything to say that were unbiased or worth listening to was testament solely to his upbringing. That was, he supposed, why he was here. To find his voice and what it wanted to say. To keep his conscience- what it was. Not that it was meant to be easy. Especially considering where he was from, and what it meant, and how it was represented. The stabbing pain in his back told him that he lacked the common sense and confidence to follow this through. He steeled himself against this. He was here. Surely, he got credit for being here. Here. Where he was needed. At the frontline, the forefront. Here, among those who had signed up for reasons which they would advertise or take pride in or hate. Dead family members, he assumed. It often came down to that. The dead.

But what would he say if he were asked?

He hoped that Archie would not stay for his meeting with Keene. Hopefully discretion between officers stretched that far.


	4. Chapter 4

Archie delivered him up to the wardroom door and knocked smartly. His grin was beginning to tighten How could he smile like that, all the time? Did his cheeks not get sore?

A lordly voice asked them to enter.

Archie swung the door open and introduced Hornblower to the familiar figure at the Captain’s table.

“Thank you, Kennedy.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

Archie gave a smart half bow and turned on his heel, closing the door behind him. That quick entrance had knocked Horatio off guard, somewhat.

“Horatio.”

Yes.

He turned around, back to the matter at hand. He did his best to copy Archie’s bow. “Sir.”

“You’re looking well, Hornblower.”

Horatio unfolded and allowed himself to look at the man behind the table full in the face. Adam Keene did not look well. His face, always like an unmade bed, was deeper and craggier than Horatio had ever recalled it being. His hair, which he had managed to retain, was a mousey grey. He wore a small amount of stubble, Horatio noticed. Perhaps the geography of his face made it difficult to shave these days. Perhaps he had developed a palsy. He sat behind his customary retainer of heavy looking manuals; logs, charts. A novel was bound to be in there somewhere. A decanter of a thick amber liquid was to their side. The debris and detritus looked as if they had more life in them than their owner.

Hornblower realised he should reply. “Thank you, sir.”

“No need to repay the compliment, I know that I am far from that mark. And likely to remain that way.” He got, totteringly, to his feet. In any other circumstance Horatio would help him, or at least make his offer known. As he had in the past. Bound my protocol, he had no idea how he was to respond now he was on duty. Keene leant hard on the corner of his table and offered his hand to Hornblower.

“It’s good to see you again, Horatio.”

Horatio took it. “And you, Captain.”

“Wish it could be under more relaxed circumstances. You’re to join my bushel of Subs, I hear?”  
“You hear correctly, sir.”  
“Good. We need men like you, Hornblower. Men with a bit of spirit. A bit of initiative in their heads.”

Horatio wondered if he’d got him confused with someone else.

“I see that you’ve met Mr Kennedy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s a good lad. You’ll do well with him. I’m afraid we can’t offer you the most exciting of times, Hornblower.” The Captain was making his way, tremulously, back to his chair. He did not offer a seat to Hornblower. Instead, he uncorked the decanter and poured a healthy measure into a glass before him. It didn’t look as if it had been cleaned since the last time.

“Brandy?” he offered.

“No, thank you sir.”

“Keeps the cold off. I daresay you’ll find that out. What was I saying?”

“You cannot offer me the most exciting time. Sir.”

“Oh, of course. Not in Spithead, at any rate. I cross my fingers we may get our marching orders soon.”

Horatio bit the inside of his cheek. “Where are we likely to be posted, sir?”

“That, Horatio, I wouldn’t be able to tell you if I knew. And the word is ‘deployed’, for future reference.”

“Apologies, sir.”

Keene waved him off. “No need to apologise, I-” A rumble started at the back of his throat. He coughed it out. “I expect you have a lot to pick up. Didn’t fancy following your father into medicine, then?”

“No, sir.” He left out that he had disliked the idea of going into combat medicine in particular. As if it might somehow mitigate the fact that he might have to see bodily carnage.

Keene coughed again, stifled it. “I see. And the Navy, because?”

Horatio swallowed. “Call it a calling, sir.”

“That I shall. Have you met any other officers, Hornblower? Aside from Kennedy?”

“I’ve met a man called Pete, sir, but I didn’t catch a second name.”

“Clayton. Yes, I should have guessed, if Kennedy had anything to do with it. I daresay you’ll become acquainted with the rest in due time. I’d like to see you up here after supper to meet my first, second and third.”  
“Yes, sir.”

“Do you feel confident about finding your way up, or shall I ask Kennedy to fetch you?”

“I see no reason why he should be so inconvenienced again, sir.”

“Thoughtful of you, Hornblower. Send my regards to your father.”

“I shall, sir. And he sends his to you.”

“Yes, very good. I’ll see you after supper, Hornblower.”

“Yes, sir,” Horatio agreed, hoping he’d be able to get the dinner timings out of Archie.

He didn’t have too long to mull it over, because as soon as the words had left his mouth a siren sounded.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> body horror cw

Trying not to look startled, Horatio backed into the closest thing to him and gripped the door handle. Keene, to his amazement, did not seem half as alarmed. He was looking up at the ceiling, almost inconvenienced.

“What the bloody hell do you suppose that could be?”

Something rammed into Horatio’s back, hard. He exclaimed, pushed forward by some sudden compelling force and spared a panicked glance at Keene. Something started hammering.

“Get away from the bloody door!”

He had been standing right in front of it. Now it wanted to open.

He extricated himself as quickly as he could, doing his best not to draw attention from Keene or the man who he’d unwittingly locked out of the wardroom. The door burst open and a lieutenant spilled in, all wet wool and dripping rain.

“Sir, it’s Lowe. He’s back.”

Keene’s demeanour changed in a heartbeat. He leant, both hands on his desk. Low and powerful.

“What do you mean he’s _back_?”

“He’s… back, sir. On the ship.”

“What in hell’s name is he doing?”

A beat of silence passed through the cabin. The lieutenant seemed to be doing his best to measure his voice. “I think you should come and have a look, sir.”

Keene collected himself together. “Very well. And get that bloody alarm turned off.”

The man nodded, and took off back down the corridor, doing everything in his power to run without actually running. Keene followed. Horatio supposed he should, as well.

The alarm was still sounding, low honking pulses of sound that chased each over the beginning and the end of each other. It was bone-jarringly unpleasant. He wondered if it would sound the same outside of all this metal.

The gritty blue tread of the corridor was worn thin where he followed it. Up ahead, he could see an open hatch and a ladder with Keene at the bottom of it. Horatio’s heart skipped a beat thinking of the many ways which that could end. Keene, however, didn’t seem worried. He simply looked at Horatio and said mildly, “Oh, you’re coming, are you? I suppose you might as well.”

Feeling stung, Horatio made his way up the ladder behind Keene, at a far slower pace than he would have liked. How on earth did this man have command of a ship. A little intricacy only the Navy would know. A short, bloody war, wasn’t that the toast?

Light had fallen quickly out on deck. The first prickings of starts were about visible, under the low thick layer of cloud. The silhouette of the Isle of Wight was completely hidden against the sky. The deck was lit up with the same low-wattage strip lamps that he had seen down in the gunroom. They buzzed. They cast a light strong enough to see by, and one which picked up the misty rain and the water on deck like a city at night. They gave him more than enough light to see the little knot of men around the middle of the deck. It was more or less where he had landed earlier that day – an hour, and hour and a half? – ago when Archie had pulled him aboard after scrambling up the side. No-one on the deck seemed to be moving.

Keene reached the edge of the crowd and stood very still. They all looked at him, expectant. Horatio didn’t suppose he should go any further.

He hung back in the shadows, hoping not to be seen, or at least not to be seen yet. There didn’t seem to be a lot of action taking place around the group on deck. They were standing around a bundle on the deck. Horatio supposed that it was Lowe.

He caught flashes on conversation, floating over the metal carapace.

“-idea what did for him?”

Someone, the other side of Lowe from Horatio, knelt on deck. He could hear the wet wood protesting. They gestured to someone else to look at what they were looking at.

The someone else gave a long, low whistle.

“Get the doctor to declare it.”, said Keene. His voice sounded very low.

The person who was kneeling stood up, stepped over the body, came over to the door Horatio was standing in. He almost fell over him. The two looked at each other in startled surprise. The other man didn’t even seem to register they hadn’t met before.

“Oh, it’s you is it? The new chap. You’ll be his replacement.”

“Sir?”

The man nodded over to the deck. “Lowe’s. Go and have a look, it’ll do you good. I’m off to fetch the MO.”

Horatio nodded and watched him go. He wondered what the medical officer would be able to do for the man. He didn’t look to be moving.

In tracking the sullen man’s movements, a clutch of heads had turned to where Horatio was standing. He supposed that meant he should introduce himself. Always such a stander on ceremony. Damn Archie.

He locked his knees and picked his way across the soaking deck.

Keene was the last to see him.

“Horatio.”

“Sir,” he said, and nodded. Nobody else said anything. Horatio looked down.

The man at his feet was obviously dead, and was soaking wet. Drowned. They must have pulled him from the water when they came to get Keene. Horatio wondered how long he’d been missing.

The hatch opened again and a balding man came blustering forward. Horatio stepped aside. The medical officer got to both knees and pulled up the man’s half closed eyelids. Against his greenish skin. Horatio looked away discreetly.

The medical officer opened the man’s mouth. There were two tongues.

He sat back on his haunches. “Well, that’ll be what did it.”

“What do you think it was?”

“God knows.” He got to his feet and took his gloves off, putting them in his back pocket so that they stuck out like feathers. “Anyone else touched him?”

The man Horatio had been conversing with earlier raised a hand, almost sheepishly. The MO eyed him.

“There’s a bottle of disinfectant in my cabin. I want you to wash with it and leave your uniform in the corner.”

The man nodded. “Sir.”

“Bloody fucking idiot,” said the medical officer after he’d departed. “Should have known it would be him. Right lads, get him wrapped up. I don’t want anyone else making _that_ same mistake. Who in hell’s name set the alarm off?”

Nobody answered. The man who had come into Keene’s cabin the first time looked around either side of him. It didn’t seem to escape the MO’s notice.

“ _Whoever_ it was, I expect Captain Keene will have it dealt with in due process. Sod off, the lot of you.”

They dispersed, two retrieving what looked like a heavy waxed tarpaulin from a metal cache locked and bolted by the entrance Horatio himself had scrambled up. He looked at them rather than at the dead man and his tongues. He hadn’t moved his head since he’d caught a glimpse of them. Accidentally.

He wondered how he had died. So wet. Had he simply drowned? Had he…. suffocated on his extra tongue? How had he made it back on deck? Had he climbed all that way only to die?

An avuncular hand landed on his shoulder. “Brandy,” said Keene’s voice. For once, he didn’t feel like refusing.


	6. Chapter 6

Back in Keene’s cabin, after a large quantity of brandy had been poured into a glass and set before him, Horatio asked what he’d wanted to ask from the start. Keene knew it was coming.

“Horatio. I wish I could give you an answer.”

“Sir. Surely you must have some idea what –happened.”

Keene shrugged, concealed a cough. “I have as good an idea as anyone on this ship, Horatio. Sub-Lieutenant Lowe went missing three weeks ago. Once it was clear he wasn’t coming back, we requested a replacement. You arrived. That is all I know.”

“What do you mean, when it was obvious he wasn’t coming back?”

“It’s the sea, Horatio. Things happen. Men desert. Some go mad. Some can... do other things. Or have other things happen to them.”

Horatio didn’t want to delve into that.

Keene seemed to wait. Maybe to let it sink in. Then he said; “Evidently, he’s returned now. It’s best not to dwell.”

Horatio didn’t know how he couldn’t.

“How did he – get back, sir?”

Keene sighed and shrugged. It was a strangely childlike gesture. “I don’t know,” he said. “We won’t. Take my advice and don’t think about it. Go and get something to eat. The mess bell is about to go. You’ve got last dog, if I’m not mistaken.”

Dogwatch, Horatio assumed. “Of course, sir.”

“Go. You know your way back to the gunroom?”

Horatio nodded, unsure that he did but not wanting to admit as such. God, he was hopeless. This was a mistake. All of it. Him being here, him being…. involved. In any way. Here at all, out here at all. Him with access to any sort of weapon. Him on the front line in any sort of way.

He bit the inside of his cheek. Keene didn’t have to notice these things.

“Dismissed,” said Keene. He didn’t appear to have.

Horatio made his way back down the corridor. God, this place was like a prison. Newly outfitted, the smell of paint still vaguely permeated. Paint and wet metal. Stale air.

He reached the ladder.  _ Why were they so much harder going down than going up _ ? He kept his hands still. Half of his mind was still on the deck.

He reached the gunroom and considered knocking. Archie had. But then Archie had told him he didn’t have to. Which way would look more professional? Following an example or following advice? He opted to knock. In case somebody was behind. it would serve as a warning if nothing else.

He did so. Then he opened the door. Asserting his confidence as an officer by coming in anyway. He hoped.

The gunroom was not empty. But it was silent. Some food had been delivered at some point, Horatio noticed. It had to have come from somewhere, but there was no sign of who had brought it or from where. Nobody seemed to be touching it. Another man had been added. He looked up and met Horatio's eye, raising his eyebrows briefly in greeting. Horatio did the same to him. This would be the fourth sub. There were five of them. There was one left to meet.

Horatio took a seat left vacant, which was quickly becoming his customary one.

From down the hall, he heard the beginnings of a ruckus pick up. Schoolground sounds. Men laughing and larking. The ratings’ mess, he guessed. Archie got up and left.

Pete watched him go, his eyebrows raised. Horatio tracked his progress to the door, ready to stand in case he was needed. It seemed like someone should follow him. Someone ought to make sure he wasn’t alone. Pete must have sensed it, because he caught Horatio’s eye and shook his head imperceptibly.

“Best to leave him, mate. Stew?”

Horatio nodded, passing his plate over. It was made of hammered tin. A cursory attempt to enamel it had been made. The blue edging matched the tin cup. Perhaps it was deliberate.

Pete offered him the ladle of the stewpot. He couldn’t make out any discernible ingredients.

“We call it ‘brown stew’,” said the new man. “Can’t imagine why. James Hether.”

Horatio took his hand. “Horatio Hornblower.”

“Hornblower?.”

Horatio shrugged a shoulder.

“Yes. Not much one can do about it.”

Pete chewed some meat, considering. “Horatio’s a good name. Solid. Like a horse’s name.”

“Horatio Kitchener,” said Hether, tipping a mug towards Horatio.

“Horatio Nelson, of course.”

“Naturally. Quite a naval pedigree you’ve got to follow through on, Hornblower.”

“Yes. I hope I can be of service,” he said. It seemed like the only thing he could say.

“Oh, we all hope that,” said Hether. “Have as much stew as you like, by the way. It feeds a hundred. The kitchen churn it out like nobody’s business. We get the same as the ratings, but they hope if they leave a pot with us we won’t complain as much. You get a spirit ration, too.”

“I’m on watch.”

“All the more reason to have one. You’ll get it after. You’ll need it.”

Horatio thought of his brandy from earlier.

As if on cue, Pete – or Clayton, as Horatio should probably start calling him- casually brought up Horatio’s pre-dinner activities. “Heard they found Lowe.”

“Heard they found more than they were bargaining for,” said Hether, reaching over for more stew. Horatio felt a pang of indignancy on the dead man’s behalf. He wondered if he should say something. He would like to imagine someone would speak up on his behalf if it was him who had died like – that.

“Ah, so you heard about that as well?”

“From the horse’s mouth. Who told you?”

Clayton waved the question away. “It’s all over the place. Two-Tongue Harry Lowe. Imagine what you could do with that, eh?”

Horatio put down his knife and fork more decisively than he intended.

Both looked at him. Hether’s face softened marginally.

“You’ll get used to it. People live and then they die. You get used to taking it lightly.”

Horatio felt his expression stay exactly the same. Maybe he should try to look more understanding. Even though he didn’t, and hoped he never would, understand.

“Well, not lightly,” said Hether. “That was a poor choice of words. Of course you never take it lightly. You just – deal with it, I suppose. Make out that it isn’t that scary. It’s only death.”

A beat.

“But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t deserve some dignity. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Horatio didn’t mention that it wasn’t him who had said the comment in the first place. Although Clayton, to his credit, had the good grace to look sheepish.

“Do you know how he got back on board?” he asked, seeming more dignified. Horatio hoped it wasn’t just for his benefit.

“Yeah, that was bloody strange. Reckon he’d just been lying doggo for a bit?”

Clayton shook his head, his mouth full. “Not like that. Something had to put him there.”

“Just flop him on board like a landed fish?”

“Why not? You head stories. Had a cousin in the infantry. He says you can hear them, out in No Man’s Land. It’s the shell holes they like.”

“I’ve heard the pilots get a rough deal,” said Hether, conceding the point. “Some of them won’t go up any more. Heard of at least one who was shot for it.”

“Everyone’s heard of at least one pilot shot for cowardice because of it. I heard about Jerry crucifying a Canadian and nailing him to a door.”

“Seems like we’re getting off lightly,” said Hether, with little trace of humour. Clayton smirked wryly.

“See anything on your way up?” asked Hether, inviting Horatio into the conversation. Horatio rather wished he wouldn’t. There wasn’t anything he could contribute. Certainly not in a meaningful way.

“No, I can’t say I did.” Then, “what sort of things do you mean? To look out for?”

Hether shrugged. “Knowing’s half the battle, I suppose. Sneaky bastards.”

“Them or Jerry?”

“Oh, both of them. Who knows. We’re going to end up on the receiving end of one of them.”

“But why bring him back?”

“Scare us, I suppose. Wait and return him the day of his replacement? That’s got to be deliberate.”

Horatio felt a chill go down his back, like a nerve going sour.

Hether carried on regardless.

“Bloody alarm frightened the life out of me. Thought I was going to shit myself.”

“Some spanner wanker panicked and let the whole ship know.”

“Who found him?”

“God knows. Nobody’s come forward. Chadd’s in medical isolation, though.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Chadd. That must have been the man who had touched him. It. Him. Was he a him, still?

“Knew it would be bloody him. The man can’t do anything without getting gung-ho about it. He thinks he’s Rob Roy. You met him yet?”

This last question was directed at Horatio.

“I – yes. Briefly.”

Hether nodded, appearing satisfied. Horatio almost broached the subject of the mysterious fifth officer, while they were on the subject of other officers. He didn’t have to, however, as someone he assumed to be the man himself sat himself down. He seemed very vaguely familiar.

He didn’t make any effort to introduce himself to Horatio. He barely made an effort to avoid him. The other two had fallen more or less quiet.

“Where’s your mate?” the newcomer asked Clayton at last. he had the pot in front of him. He was eating out of it. Horatio wondered if this was standard practice for the last man at the table. Perhaps it saved on washing.

“I don’t know,” said Clayton.

“Course you bloody don’t,” he said under his breath. “And you are?”

“Hornblower,” said Hornblower.

The fifth sub-lieutenant looked at him, full in the face. “Hornblower. Blow a lot of horns, do you?”

“I’m not in the habit of blowing my own,” said Horatio. The man’s face didn’t change. Maybe he hadn’t understood the joke.

The other man turned away with an air of dismissal that grated, despite Horatio having known him less than a minute and liking him far less than that time would usually permit. Horatio opened his mouth to ask the man’s name, but the man was already speaking.

“You look like a twat.”

Horatio blinked, startled.

“I’m sure – appearances can be deceiving,” he managed to stutter out, unsure why that is what had sprung to mind first. Clayton got up and left quietly. Horatio wondered if he’d just admitted to looking like a twat.

The other man grunted. Horatio sensed that the conversation was probably over. He exchanged a glance with Hether. The man grimaced. “Come and give me a hand with these plates, Horatio.”

Horatio stood, managing to maintain eye contact with Hether. He did his best to look questioning. Hether pressed three plates to him, and two mugs with the remnants of lukewarm tea. Horatio emptied them into the pitiful sink.

Hether stood at the door, one foot propping it open. “Come on now, Mr Hornblower,” he said, ostentatiously loud. “We don’t want to keep the galley waiting.”

Horatio piled the crockery on top of each other into some semblance of order and followed Hether out the door. Hether was holding a clutch of forks in his hand.

“Isn’t there a-” he managed to ask, before someone tall came barrelling down the hall and took the forks off Hether.

“Thank you  _ very _ much, sir,” he said with a trace of bitterness. “I do love to know I have assistance where my job will allow.”

“Apologies, Styles,” said Hether, gesturing for Horatio to hand over the plates he was holding. “Horatio, this is Styles. You’ll be seeing a lot of him. Styles, Sub Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower. He kicked you out of your berth.”

Styles looked Horatio up and down. “So you did.”

“Didn’t mean to do your job for you, Styles,” Hether continued. “Simpson’s arrived and he’s in a foul mood.”

This seemed to have some sort of meaning for Styles. He nodded sagely. “Say no more. I’ll go to my quarters and come back with a pistol.”

“Would that you could, Styles.” Horatio picked up and undercurrent of decided bitterness. “That would save us all a lot of time and effort.”

“Had a go at you, has he sir?” Styles asked Hornblower. Had he? Hornblower thought back. Being called a twat wasn’t tantamount to what he would call ‘having a go’, necessarily. He seemed to inspire that reaction in people. He’d almost grown used to it.

Hether huffed air out through his gritted teeth. “He’s being generally unpleasant. You know how he is.”

“All too well, sir. I’ll check in on His Nibs and see if there’s anything I can do to him. For him.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Take care, sir.”

“And you too, Styles.”

“And you, Mr Hornblower,” Styles said, rounding on Horatio. “You seem rather his type.”


	7. Chapter 7

“James, what the devil did he mean by that?” Horatio was beginning to think that perhaps he wouldn’t be able to maintain his carefully constructed unflappable demeanour for much longer. “Is there something I should be aware of?”

James sucked his cheeks in, visibly. He was schooling his features. Horatio was all too aware of the signs that gave away _that_ particular school of acting.

“It’s nothing, Horatio.”

“I have to say, that didn’t seem the case.”

“It seemed-” He broke off, then sighed heavily. Silently inclined his head back to the gunroom. “He’s - difficult. He’s the oldest sub here. He’s got more experience than all of us, almost put together. He knows how things should be done, and he _knows_ he knows that. Fancies himself the authority. And I don’t know how true this is, but reading between the lines the impression I get is he has a chip on his shoulder about rank. The whole temporary gentleman routine. Look, if I were you I’d just keep mum around him around the bloke and let that be that. No need to go provoking.”

“I wasn’t-”

Hether held up a pre-emptive hand. “I know, I know. You aren’t to know. It’s just… a fragile subject.”

“I hadn’t guessed,” said Horatio, attempting to be dry.

“It’s nothing to… _worry_ about. Don’t let it hang over you.”

 _Don’t dwell_ , thought Horatio. _Of course_.

“Should I consider this a word of warning?” he asked.

Hether sighed. “Yes. Alright. If you must. You’re on last dog?”

Horatio nodded.

“I’m on First. I’ll come and relive you. Port or Starboard?”

“I don’t know. Captain Keene asked him to report to him first.”

Hether bit the inside of his cheek and nodded. “Last dog. You’re with Archie. He’s usually Second Port.”

“I’ll…. See him on the deck, then.”

Hether nodded tightly and tried to smile. Horatio turned smartly on his heel and left up the ladder.

Keene’s officer was full of men between his father and Keene’s age. Keene himself was sat in what Horatio was beginning to realise must be his customary position on his table amidst the wreckage. His paternal smile at the sight of Horatio made Horatio want to fall through the floor at a faster rate than he usually did.

“Gentlemen. Our newest _Justinian_.”

Several nods in his direction. A handshake or two. Faces he felt he ought to recognise, not least from standing above the fallen officer on deck. Names he should know. Names he would.

“Horatio. Fourth Lieutenant Bathurst. He will be your watch handover.”

Bathurst, who had been the first to shake Horatio’s hand, suddenly slid to the frontal cortex of his mind. He’d been the man who had pulled the alarm. It had been half dark, but Horatio was sure of it.

“Third Lieutenant Rogers, Second Lieutenant Butlin and First Lieutenant Eccleston. I believe you have met all of your subs?”

Horatio bowed his head deferentially. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Please, don’t let me keep you.”

Horatio took that for a dismissal. Bathurst, who looked harmless enough, led him towards the stern of the ship. All in all, the _Justinian_ was not large. Not a frigate or a destroyer. Not even, to be honest, a warship. Just a brick in the wall. He and the half jacks.

Bathurst was talking to him. Horatio caught the tail end of what he was saying just in time to put together a reply.

“-service long?”

“On the _Justinian_?”

“Generally.”

“No, sir. Just got out of Dartmouth.”

He felt Bathurst’s eye slide over him from the side. “I see.”

Horatio winced. He tried to keep it under wraps.

“Is it obvious, sir?”

“No more so than with anyone else, Hornblower. You’ll be fannying about on deck for the next two years of your life, you’ll get used to it all. The watch station is a bloody state, by the way. Sorry about that.”

“I understand that there was some unpleasantness.”

 _Some unpleasantness_. A man was found drowned with two tongues in his mouth Horatio, you demented fool. He managed to cough out “I – my condolences,” mortified.

Bathurst shrugged. “Death of a man is never easy. Fellow officer- you spend a lot of time together. You get to know one another. It’s always at the back of your mind, but… brings it home all the more, sometimes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s got nothing to you with you. Long may it not. I barely knew the bloke, to be honest. Your brother subbies might be taking it tough.”

Horatio thought of Archie at dinner. Not, he realised, that Archie had eaten anything. He made a vague noise at the back of his throat and hoped it passed for a reply.

The watch station was, as promised, an absolute shambles. There were three mugs of tea in varying stages of emptiness, papers covered with tea rings and an ash tray far more ash than tray all competing for scant space between a telegraph and a radio.

“You and a flagger in here. Kennedy’s on last dog port. You’ll see him around. Any questions, ask him. That’s what he’s there for. As for your handover, aside from that bit of nastiness you saw on deck this evening I’ve got sweet fanny adams to report.” He fished around on the desk and pulled a heavy book out from underneath the second cup of tea to the right. “Log reports. Read them while I’m here. Any questions, ask me. Book of Abbreviations first drawer. You won’t need it after your first week. If you don’t do anything else, keep those logs up to date. Use mine as a model. Any changes to the ship or to the crew. Technical or social. That's a legal requirement.”

Horatio nodded.

“Inform anyone who comes in the status of your watch station. Liase with the other officer on watch. Communicate with your supervisors. Monitor your equipment-” he tapped the radio. “Flag wagger will take care of that. Compass, draft. Not a lot else to do on an anchor watch. Any deviation, note it down. If you’re not sure it’s right, check. Brain, book, buddy – that’s Kennedy – boss. Boss is the last resort. If I get called down here because our course prow has turned by nine degrees I will-not be happy.”

Horatio nodded again, knotting his fingers together in his pocket. Bathurst was, impossibly, still talking. Horatio couldn’t remember to do all of this. There was no way. What the hell had be got himself into.

“Not the purpose of logs, but they do force you to follow along. If you’ve got nothing to do, read up. Your job as OOW is to understand how anything that may happen could affect this vessel. That includes maintenance.”

Horatio hoped Archie was more confident than he was, including in knowing what an OOW might be.

“Get Kennedy to test you.”

Horatio most certainly would, although he had the feeling the opposite may well also be true.

Bathurst held his gaze. Horatio held it back. Eventually, Bathurst conceded. “Get those logs read. I’m here to talk you through them. If you need.”

Horatio screwed his mouth into a semblance of a smile, unsure whether this was a test or a genuine offer of camaraderie.

Logs. These he could manage. These he knew. He’d been around logs for as long as he could remember, for years. Medical logs, patient logs, ships’ logs. Shipping channels.

Bathurst had been right. They were, for the most part, exceedingly straightforward. Various half-hourly documentation of the ship’s direction and draft, more so to monitor the equipment than anything else, he supposed. Notes of who had come in and out. There was a reference to a visiting ‘four o’clocker’ right at the beginning of Bathurst’s most recent entry. Horatio made a mental note to ask Archie about that later. He had no desire to further debase himself in the eyes of the lieutenant.

At the end, almost the last thing Bathurst had written before demobbing, ‘ _17:38 OOD, Sb. Lt LOWE, H. A [dec]’_.

“All set?”

Horatio nodded. “All set, sir.”

“Good to hear. Ink pellets are about, somewhere. Can I leave you to it, Mr Hornblower?”

“By all means, sir” said Horatio, with more confidence than he felt. Bathurst shut the door behind him and he fell almost immediately into panic.

It was like being at school again, thrust into a position and suddenly realising you had to perform your part in it. Memories of a brief stint in Sevenoaks Rugby IXs were making their unbidden way with ill advised confidence into the forefront of his mind. He shut them out and opened the drawer for the Book of Naval Abbreviations. His mind had been on it since Bathurst clued him in to its existence.

‘OOD’ meant ‘Officer on the Deck’. He had actually known that one. He couldn’t decide if it was an example of flippancy or very dry humour on Bathurst’s part.

‘OOW’, Officer of the Watch. That would be him, then.

He hadn’t realised there had been quite so many… ways of saying things in the Navy. Of course, he was clued in to the majority of the jackspeak from books and from Dartmouth, and he knew his way around a navigational chart and a torpedo rig. That’s where, it seemed, most familiarity between him and the Navy had ended. He had thought he’d been rather well armed. Although Dartmouth hadn’t seen fit to bother with more than the very basics, and a lot of that seemed to revolve around relentless PT and an oddly serious amount of skipping. His shoulders were wider than he’d imagined they could go. He could climb up and down the side of the ship with ease, he supposed, if the desire ever, _ever_ overtook him. One thing that he did not think he’d agree with was the insistence on naming things with completely different names from their landed counterparts. Right and left he’d absorbed from an early age from an almost exclusive diet of sea fiction, but he was considering drawing the line at ‘aft’ where ‘end’ would do quite nicely. It was needlessly complex. Just another way of excluding those who had not been to the manner born, he supposed. Or at least making it nigh on impossible for them to catch up.

There was a soft knock.

Horatio spun around, unsure of the entry protocol. Had Bathurst ever mentioned one? He slid the Naval Abbreviations back into its drawer and slammed it shut.

“Er, enter?” he said, hoping it sounded commanding enough.

The door opened to reveal the gently smiling face of Archie Kennedy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Public' schools in the UK are fee-paying schools whose head teacher is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC). 'Public' refers to their origins as schools open to any public citizen who could afford to pay the fees; they are not funded from public taxes. They're synonymous with being Old as Balls and pretty elite. 
> 
> Sevenoaks is a public school in Kent. Rugby IXs (or Rugby Fourths, if we're speaking how actual people speak) are the team made up of everyone who is not in the Firsts, Seconds or Thirds. Horatio is a but posh and crap at sport.


	8. Chapter 8

“Mr Kennedy!”

Archie moved to come and sit with him. “Archie, please.”

While he and Archie were technically rank equals, it sat wrong with Horatio somehow to call him by his first name. It must be those added years of superiority. “Of course,” he smiled. “Archie.”

“Alright, are you, Mr Hornblower?”

Horatio leant back against his chair. “I am having the strangest sense of deja vu. Since you ask. I could swear we’ve had a very similar conversation quite recently.”

Archie grinned and ducked his head. “I’m just teasing, Horatio. How are you?”

“I can’t really complain.”

“ _That_ good?” Archie sat heavily in the signalman’s chair. “Well. Please don’t stop on my account. Christ, Bathurst’s left this place in a state!”

“He did warn me,” said Horatio, feeling it was only fair to the departed fourth.

“Still no reason to leave you in squalor, Horatio. How did you find him?”

“Lieutenant Bathurst?”

“The very same.” Archie was peering into one of the cups that had been left on the table.

“He seemed…” Horatio hesitated, not wanting to speak ill of a superior officer. Not that he had conducted himself in any way conducive to being worthy of it. It had merely been Horatio’s lack of professional knowledge which had made him feel so ill at ease.

His pause seemed to speak volumes to Archie.

“Give you both barrels, did he?” his companion smiled.

“How… do you mean?”

“Throw you in at the deep end?”

“It’s a standard duty watch.”

Archie’s smile grew slightly deeper, but didn’t seem to be aimed at Horatio. At least, not at his expense. “Yes, he does that. He’ll tell you twice of what you need to know in half the time it should take you to know it. It’s his way.”

“Sink or swim? No pun intended.”

“Sink or swim, indeed. Not that you feel you ought to sink. A question is just a sign that you’ve been listening. If you don’t ask anything and manage to cock up, that’s what lights the warning light. So to speak.”

“Well.” said Horatio shortly. “I shan’t cock up, then.”

“And I shan’t let you.” With the dim lighting behind him, Archie looked like a medieval saint. He gave Horatio a final well-wishing beam and stood up. “I should be off, Horatio. I’m taking up valuable space here. Matthews will be along soon and wonder why his seat’s been nabbed. Do you know where my station is?”

Horatio nodded, tightly. He turned away, feigning confidence and waited for the door to shut behind him. The compasses in front of him should be compared, he supposed.

“Horatio…” He heard a sigh. Then a hand landed on his shoulder. “Relax. You’re not in charge. You don’t have the ship. Anything you need clarifying, you run by me. Alright?You’re my 2IC.”

2IC. Second in command.

He tried to force a smile, for Archie. “I’m alright.”

The hand on his shoulder squeezed.

“I’ve had watches where we’ve been two hundred and fifty admiralty miles off the nearest head of land and haven’t seen a single ship. I’ve had others where I’ve spent four hours trying to stop us running aground. Once I tried to dodge the Solent fishing fleet for ninety minutes. They’re all different. You don’t forget your first.”

“Which one of those was your first?”

“Oh, none of them,” said Archie lightly. “First watch I just stared at the wall and moped. Get your watch out.”

Horatio pushed back his sleeve. Archie compared their two watches, making a note of the time. His was quietly expensive, a dark leather strap with metal work which could be either silver or very pale gold. “Good. All matched up. And sub-lieutenant?”

“Yes?”

“When someone else enters your watch station, it’s customary to say ‘nothing to report’”.

“Oh!” _Inform anyone who comes in the status of the watch station_ . He _knew_ that. He knew, and it had still slipped his mind entirely. “Of course! Archie, I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t apologise! I daresay you’ll remember,” he said with a wink, and with that, he was off. Gone. Horatio blinked at the space he used to be. It would be nice to have a friend, he supposed.

Not that he had that much experience with them. With friends. Or with other naval officers. Both of which Archie was, or Horatio hoped that he would become. Archie certainly seemed willing. Or at least to put across the impression that he was. While Horatio had had no real (he supposed) negative experience with a fellow seaman on board, Archie had been by far the most accommodating. Much more suitable to high command than for what he was currently being used. He put Horatio in mind of a Boy’s Own protagonist, all bright hair and beaming smile, ready to take on the dastardly. Some swashbuckling, Prisoner of Zenda-like existence. Horatio, who had barely had the wherewithal to venture out of Kent, was his foil. He supposed Archie was saddled with him enough. It wasn’t fair to push his company too far, especially not while they were on the same watch and shared a berth.

He was chewing his cheek and considering his further options, not wanting to look either keen or standoffish, when another man entered and startled him.

In his panic, “nothing to report,” were the first words out of his mouth. At least that was his legal duty fulfilled.

The signalman raised his eyebrows in greeting around the piece of bread in his mouth. He appeared to have walked from the galley with it. He took it out with a free hand and balanced it on one of the empty cups.

“Sorry about that, sir, Trying to catch some late scran.”

Horatio blinked. “Manage, did you?”

“Course, I also hung around the galley hoping the Yeo would tell me how tired I look. Nothing to report, you say sir?”

“Er. That’s right. Yes.”

“Goodo. Should be a quiet one then.” He installed himself on the chair that Archie had vacated and slung some headphones around his neck. “If you need me, tap. Danvers, by the way.”

“Pleasure,” said Horatio, unsure if he could be heard. The man picked his bread back up.

Horatio looked at his watch. An hour and forty-seven minutes.

 

*****

 

Two hours and two thirds of an ink pellet later, someone tapped Horatio on the shoulder. He started and managed to collide with Danvers, who almost managed to disconnect his headphones from the radio box and disorder an upsetting looking sheet of transcriptions. James Hether was there.

“Evening?” said Horatio, putting the lid on his pen and wondering why someone had been sent down to see him. “Nothing to report here, Hether.”

“Oh, good. I should have a relatively quiet time of it.”

“So you should, barring anything catastrophic happening in the next few minutes.”

Hether looked at his watch. “I’m on now, Horatio. I’m here to relieve you.”

“Oh?” Horatio looked down at his collection of logs and various, pedantically measured equipment timings. “I, er, suppose you’ll be wanting to have a look at these then. I’ve not done a lot.”

Hether looked down at Horatio’s pages of confused and coded ramblings.

Horatio bit the inside of his cheek. Between comparing the compasses, keeping an eye on the draft depth and reading back over the log notes from the past weeks, he’d fallen love with the maths of it all. The ship was outfitted with two compasses, new model Sperrys. He had made sure to contrast them at regular intervals in order to have a precise estimate window within which the compass errors can affect the course to be steered and thereafter, made good. He stood, allowing Hether to have his seat and talked him sheepishly through his working in case the gyro failed. The incoming Officer on Watch must be aware of the extent to which the the error of the magnetic might affect the course being followed or to be followed. Certainly according to the regulations. And if he had had some fun during the workings? So what of it?

Hether looked up at him. “You know, anyone would think you were enjoying this, Hornblower.”

Horatio shrugged. “Got to be done.”

“So it has, you masochistic bastard. Go on, get lost. If you see a flaggy called Preston, send him over, would you? Danvers can’t go until he gets here.”

“No, Danvers can’t,” the signalman said bitterly, noting down something which could be semaphore, morse or nonsense.

Horatio smiled to himself, nodded and left. First watch. His first watch. It hadn’t gone too badly, he thought. Hopefully those compass workings could be of some use, as well.

He almost walked directly into Archie.

“Horatio!” Archie caught Horatio, holding both of his upper arms to avoid collision. “There you are. James and I were wondering how long he could stand there until you’d notice.”

“Oh?”

“More than five minutes, I hope. I might be owed money.”

“I’m not sure, Archie, he came and got me in the end.”

Archie seemed pleased. “Good enough. I should be able to swing that. Come with me, I’m on my way to the galley. How did your first watch go?”

Horatio relayed it to him as they made their way back down to the gunroom. The watch stations were above what he had come to think of as ‘their’ deck; towards the back of the ship (‘aft’, he thought bitterly), and still decidedly belowdecks. The deck he berthed in must be under the waterline.

The ship panted gently in the Solent water. He fancied - hoped - he was beginning to notice it less.

 

*****

 

“So you spent all that time sat doing pure navigational maths? Horatio, you’re a hero.”

They were sat back down in the gunroom, just the two of them. Hether and Simpson were their opposite numbers - ‘oppos’, he’d picked up they were meant to be called - on the next watch. Clayton was on starboard. Archie had sat him down and gone through the whole process with him; port had the night watch one night, starboard the next. Instead of doing a full night’s watch - last dogwatch from six until eight, and then ‘first watch’ from eight until midnight - the starboard watch had pulled a longer afternoon watch.They had all collided at dinner because, in Archie’s words ‘we’re in the middle of a glorified harbour and getting sailors to go where they’re meant is like herding wild cats’. And he still had the bell system to think about.

“Well,” said Horatio. “It’s nothing. I enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it?”

“The maths. The unchanging nature of it.”

“Good God man, you are a gift. Master Bowles is going to talk you through astro-navigation and you’re going to have put him out of a job. I promise not to tell him.”

Horatio dipped his mouth into his tea to hide a grin. “Now, Mr Kennedy. Pride before a fall and all that.”

“Do you know what I did on my watch, Horatio? I read the First Code of Naval Laws.”

Horatio knitted his brow. “That has to have some practical application, surely?”

“Someone’s drawn a penis on the cover and they date from the sodding Crusades. I should hope they don’t.”

“Any advice worth following?”

Archie held his mug in both his hands and leant back, deep in thought. “‘A murderer is to be tied to the corpse of his victim and buried alive, whether on land or at sea’. I like the poetic irony of that one. It’s very John Donne.”

“Archie, that’s horrific.”

Archie smiled, and suddenly his normal self was back again. “How do we feel about tarring and feathering?”

“Better.”

“Yes. Far less Old Testament. When I’ve got my own command, I might try and bring it back.”

“Would you? I’d like to bring back cannons.”

Archie laughed. It seemed to take him by surprise. “Oh, wonderful! There’s something so romantic about Tall Ship sailing. I hope you’d let me on your ship.”

“Only if you’re properly attired.”

“Will you keelhaul me if I’m not?”

“No, Mr Kennedy, I’ll have you tarred and feathered.”

Archie smiled again, and it broke over his face like the sun. Horatio held his eye.

“Well acquainted with ballsacks, are you?” Archie asked at last.

Horatio thought he’d misheard.

“Am I - _sorry_?”

“The Floating Ballistic. Those new Sperrys. Only, you spent so long messing about with them, I assumed-”

“Oh!” Horatio managed to school his features. “I’m so sorry! Only, I thought you said-”

“Oh, I did,” said Archie cheerily. “They can’t set that kind of name loose in the world and not expect the Navy to take it to its logical conclusion.”

“The Floating…”

“Believe me, they’re about as much use as one when the seas get rough,” said Archie darkly, taking another draught of his tea. “As much use as a floating ballsack, I mean. You’ve got to keep the damn thing almost perfectly level to induce any kind of good behaviour in it.”

“Are we talking about the compass now.”

“Yes, Horatio.” Archie’s smile was… more veiled than before. A show smile. “Forgive me. Naval humour. One doesn’t realise how much it can permeate until it’s too late.”

“No, don’t apologise,” said Horatio, anxious to get him laughing again. Why could Horatio not understand jokes when they fell over him? “Please, don’t apologise on my account. Evidently I’m not up to much this evening.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Archie quietly. It was lost in Horatio attempting to bluster on.

“The Sperrys. Yes. Had much of a time of it with them?”

Archie shrugged. “Outfitted all the Jacks with them when they first came out. Anschütz sounded just a tad too Jerry, I’d imagine. Still, a compass is a compass I suppose.”

“A change is as good as a rest, and all that.”

“Quite.” Archie looked tired. A beat, and then “May you excuse me for a minute, Horatio?”

Horatio tried not to look as taken aback as he felt. “Of course.”

Archie smiled wanly. “Thank you. I shan’t be long.”

He picked himself up, sitting his mug on the counter. Horatio and his chair were between Archie and the door. Horatio endeavoured to make himself as flat as possible. Archie huffed out a defeated sounding laugh and put his hand on Horatio’s shoulder to steady himself as he climbed over, doing his best not to disturb any of the furnishings. As he left, he have Horatio’s shoulder a gentle squeeze.

That feeling lingered there, just a moment longer than could be proper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sperry - a new make of compass made to rival the German Anschütz, which had been the only type in the Royal Navy until 1913.  
> Flags - signalmen  
> Horatio - foolishly tall man


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO in the UK the word 'fag' is a colloquialism for cigarette and there are cigarette fags present in this chapter. I thought I would give you team a collective heads-up because of the... other history that word has (thanks hets)

The vacant gunroom rumbled. Horatio sat in silence, his lips pressed close together. The blood had long since vacated them. Ten minutes later, and Archie had still not returned. Not that Horatio had expected him to. He and his infernal inability to detect sarcasm when it sought him out and fell over him in public. Archie. He was so _nice_. Horatio couldn’t imagine being saddled with himself, every hour of the day. It was bad enough he had to live through it first hand. Nannying him must be far worse. No wonder Archie had needed a few minutes to himself.

The door knocked. A head poked around the door. Another he hadn’t seen before. A steward.

“Sub Lieutenant Hornblower?”

“Can I help?” Horatio blinked good-naturedly.

“Old man’s office, sir. He’s expecting.”

“Captain Keene?” Horatio’s heart skipped a beat. All that pratting about with the navigational equipment. Of course he’d overstepped his boundaries.

He swallowed dryly and nodded. “Alright. Lead on.”

Once again up that sodding ladder.

The steward kept ahead of him the whole time. Under the guise of not wanting to be too quick and undermine his authority, Hornblower hung back and tried to stop his stomach and throat from spasming. His hands would be filthy as well. He wondered when he’d be able to excuse himself to the head to get himself back together. His housewife and a _Gordon Pym_ were among the only things that he’d unpacked so far. Although perhaps he’d been wise not to unpack completely after all. Three times with the Captain after four hours at sea was sure to be a record.

Again, he was outside the wardroom door. He wondered if Keene ever left the place.

The steward entered without knocking. That would make him the Captain’s steward. Another role learnt on his stint as the Navy’s shortest serving officer.

Keene was there. To his surprise, so was Archie.

He was probably here to give evidence for the prosecution, Horatio realised with a smart. He had liked Archie.

Archie tried to meet his eye, but Horatio avoided it.

In doing so, he caught sight of the signalman from his watch, sat with another man in signals gear. With Archie, they would make the entire port watch team. Christ. He must have really cocked it.

“Ah, Horatio,” said Keene, peering over to where Hornblower stood. The steward ducked out quietly. “Good. We’re all here then.”

Horatio bit the inside of his cheek and willed Keene to get on with it.

“You have all heard of our episode of unpleasantness on deck this afternoon. Horatio more so than any of you.”

Horatio felt eyes slide to him gently. He winced inwardly. Either Keene was giving him an out, or he was detailing his afternoon for all to hear before he chucked him.

Someone must have realised that Keene wasn’t going to move on without a verbal signal. A rough murmur went around the wardroom.

“Nobody feels his loss more keenly than his fellow officers. I have written to Mr Lowe’s family with confirmation of his death. However, due to the untimely and, frankly, bizarre manner in which it happened, I regret that I have had to take action which I would usually regard as overtly militant. I can assure you it was not taken with a light heart, but I hope you’ll understand there is no other course of action open to me.”

Horatio heaved a sigh. Here it came. He felt almost calm.

“Lieutenant Lowe’s body was handled in a way which violates the advised course of action under the circumstances. I have suspended the officer responsible. He is on escort back to shore, pending review.”

Another ripple of conversation and movement, this time more lively. Who, and why, and what had they done? Horatio was so busy thinking in dazzled bewilderment that he wasn’t about to be hauled off on shore leave for bending the rules of recreational maths that he almost missed the sinister undertone that those words held. The corpse. The officer responsible.

Archie was white.

Keene allowed them a moment for this news to sink in, for the shock to be vocalised. He then carried on; “The only course left to me now is to appoint his replacement.”

The air tensed.

 _His replacement_. That would be a sub lieutenant.

Keene cleared his throat, and then he didn’t speak. The silence grew thicker. Keene tried once more, looking like he was having to force the words out.

”It is no secret some tensions have manifested in the past few weeks. It is in nobody’s interest to exacerbate these. In the interest of remaining partisan, I have appointed a new lieutenant from off ship. Mr Matthews will collect him in the morning and escort him on ship. I am most assured of his credentials and I am confident he will be a valuable asset to the _Justinian._ ”

Archie cleared his throat into the ensuing silence. “Is there anything you can tell us about him, sir?”

“Nothing that I’m sure you won’t be able to ask him in due course, Sub Lieutenant Kennedy. Good man with an impeccable service record. Saw Dogger Bank and Heligoland. He’ll do us good.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

“And I am glad to have found him, Mr Kennedy. You four are the last to know. I couldn’t have your watch disturbed. Danvers?”

Danvers looked up from where his gaze had drifted to the corner of the captain’s desk.

“Yes, sir?”

“You subbed in for Matthews’ watch this evening, I am given to understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will continue to stand in for the foreseeable.”

“Of course, sir.”

Keene nodded, happy. “Dismissed.”

They stepped outside just as the bell was ringing. Archie stood and listened. “Five of them. Half an hour before anyone needs to shake a leg anywhere. Flaggies? Cuppa?”

“You inviting us into the sacred space, sir?”

“I daresay we don’t mind, do we Horatio?” Archie asked, smiling. Horatio forced himself to act in a manner he deemed casual and aloof, far unwilling to let Archie’s recent behaviour towards him colour a chance to bond with fellow seamen.

“I daresay we won’t, Mr Kennedy.”

*****

Horatio’s cup of tea was exactly where he had abandoned it. Self-consciously, he collected it and Archie’s and busied himself washing them at the sink. Four others lay drying in the rack.

“Danny Flags! Welcome to port watch.”

“Pleasure to be here, Mr MacKenzie. Long have I waited to be demobbed of a bastard.”

“Reckon he’s going to like being passed over for a promotion, do you?” Archie’s signalman leant back on his chair and lit a cigarette. “Keene, you magnificent bugger. I didn’t know he had it in him.”

“That incoming fifth is going to have a hell of a job of it.”

Horatio waited patiently for the tea urn to finish filling its third cup. The dribble was getting decidedly less powerful.

“What do you reckon? Disgraced bridge officer or jumped up little shit with a flimsy?”

“Gentlemen,” said Archie mildly.

“Right you are sir,” MacKenzie deferred. “Present company accepted.”

“That’s alright, MacKenzie. It isn’t my fault that not everyone can pass their Lieutenant’s Exam.”

Horatio took advantage of the ensuing chortle to sit down and make the tea known. They seemed so at ease with each other and their good-natured ribbing. Both the signals were master’s mates. They’d have been midshipmen, once upon a time. Perhaps Archie knew them of old. He had barely any reason to lead the ship over them.

“Cheers,” said Danvers, leaning in. “To my illustrious future.”

Horatio clinked his mug to theirs and joined in the chorus. He had been left with the scrag end of the tea, all gritty leaves and undissolved sugar. He took a bitter swallow and decided it was far too stewed for even him to bother with.

“Poor Chadd,” said Archie after a while. “I wonder what’ll happen to him.”

“I wonder what he did with that corpse,” said Danvers. “Fuck me. Never heard that one before.”

“I’ve been mulling over that one as well.” MacKenzie took a pensive draught of tea. “Rather adds something to rum, bum and ‘bacca, doesn’t it?”

Horatio could see where this was going to end up. He stepped in, hoping to delay the inevitable. “He touched him. Lowe, I mean.”

“Chadd did?”

Horatio nodded. “Bare handed.”

“Last I heard he was in medical isolation,” said Archie. “I suppose they’ve had to quarantine him.”

Mackenzie blew out a plume of smoke. “Well. Bugger.”

Danvers was rather less forgiving. “Teach him to go around prodding dead subbies then, won’t it? What a pillock.”

“I take it he shan’t be missed,” said Horatio, standing on the fringes of the conversation as usual.

Danvers shrugged. “Bit of a leg iron. All talk and no trousers type. Got a fag, Tom?”

MacKenzie fished his tin out of his jacket pocket and offered it over. Danvers took two, tried to give one to Horatio, who refused more out of surprise than anything else. Danvers shrugged, put it back, tapped his cigarette on the tin. “Hardly the Devil incarnate but not a bloke I’d trust to have my back. Kind of man who’d rather go to Hell than admit he was wrong.”

“And why shouldn’t he?” said MacKenzie darkly. “It’s only a short walk from this bloody place.”

Archie nursed his tea in silence, staring a particular spot on the table, for all intents and purposes very deep in thought. Horatio wondered whether he should bring in into the conversation, but decided to leave him be. He hadn’t forgotten his earlier lapse in social decorum.

The bell tolled, three sets of two. Eleven o’clock

“S’pose I better do something to earn my keep around here, gentlemen,” said Danvers, swinging his legs back to a proper position. Shower, shit, shave for me.” He took one last deep drag of his cigarette and tossed his butt into his mug. It hissed.

“Tea’s good for something, then. Coming, Tom?”

“Coming. Cheers for the tea and sympathy, sir.” He nodded at Horatio. “Sirs.”

“You’re welcome,” Archie winked. The door shut. He watched it for a heartbeat. He turned to Hornblower.

“Horatio.”

He didn’t say anything further. Then he wet his lips and tried again, meeting Horatio’s eye. “I wish to apologise. For earlier.”

Horatio cleared his throat to give himself some time to think. How to articulate to Archie that the fault was all on him? Without looking like he was trying to curry favour, or he had no understanding of how his behaviour affected others; of its ramifications on deck. He couldn’t think of a way to say any of this. Instead, he opted for a safe, non partisan, non deferential statement. “You have nothing to apologise for, Archie.”

Archie made a sound that was in equal parts indignant and slightly startled. “I can assure you that I do. For leaving you in the lurch like that. I had every intention of returning.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Don’t you?” said Archie, abstractly. Then he cleared up. “Anyway. I wanted to extend my apologies to you, Horatio. I should not have left you without an explanation. It’s been a - tough couple of weeks.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Hmm. Anyway.”

“Anyway.”

Archie looked at him and smiled. “Friends again? I would like you assure you that I am usually far better company than I am at the moment.”

“No fear, Mr Kennedy. I am never good company at all.”

Archie chuckled. “Good. I wouldn’t want to keep someone around who’s funnier than I am.” He checked his watch. “We’re on forenoon tomorrow. Then I’m due on bridge to muck in with some clerking. I daresay they’ll be An Amount of paperwork to go through the motions of putting Chadd in hospital or prison or wherever he’s going to end up. This new lieutenant coming aboard isn’t going to help matters. While I am doing that, _you_ , my friend, are to report to astro-nav. Bowles is going to adore you.”

“I look forward to meeting him.”

“Looks like a tree that a bear clawed,” Archie said thoughtfully. “First bell, on the poop deck. I shall be in the ship’s office having a terrible time.”

“Try and be positive, Mr Kennedy. At least you’ll be inside.”

“That is true,” Archie sighed. “If a howling gale starts up, I promise to think of you.”

“If a howling gale starts up, will you let me in?”

“No. It’ll be good for you. You and Bowles can huddle for warmth.”

“I do so hope that you spill something on your paperwork and have to start all over again.”

Archie smiled brightly. “So do I. XO might tell me I’m useless and send me to bed. I’ll bid you farewell, Horatio. I haven’t shaved in three days and I live in fear of the old man running a gas drill.” Archie ran both hands down his remarkably stubble-free face. He couldn’t be far off Horatio’s age. Perhaps it didn’t show because he was that much fairer? Archie ran a hand through his marmalade coloured hair, then held it out to shake Horatio’s. “It’s a pleasure to have you here, Horatio. Sleep well.”

“You too, Archie. I’ll try not to make too much noise when I come in.”

“I have been assured I am notoriously difficult to wake,” said Archie with a grin. And then he was off. Horatio gathered all of the mugs in one place and rinsed them, fishing out a disintegrating cigarette butt as he did so. He wasn’t sure why the fad hadn’t grasped him. Perhaps he had simply left it too long. That, and the standing around that it entailed. In a knot of people who all seem to gather together as if they had a shared interest. It would be a nightmare for him. They made the gunroom smell like a pub.

MacKenzie hadn’t offered Archie one either, Horatio noticed. Perhaps the sub lieutenant shared his unease at its unwanted social baggage. But then Archie, in the limited time that Horatio had known him, seemed so far the opposite. Ready with a laugh. Friendly with the subordinates. Obviously close to his brother officers. Well liked. Respected. The sort of man that Horatio hoped to be, or hoped to become when he’d signed up.

He’d seen the War as a horrible sort of opportunity. There wasn’t any way, he knew, that any conventional Navy would lower its standards so far as to let him in in peacetime. He was too gangly. As a teenager, he’d put himself in mind of an elongated, flightless gosling. He fancied that not a lot had changed, except that now he was shaving. The army was too far out of the question to even be considered. The Flying Corps further beyond that, even though they seemed so universally hated. The Navy had seemed viable.

The Navy _was_ viable, damn it. What else would he do? Rot in Kent? Follow his father into practice? Go into law? His once-preferred route of professorship was beyond his father’s salary, however admittedly generous. The Navy provided some scope for that, a framework. Some grounding in maths and navigation. Perhaps even engineering. He was a naval officer now. He was going to spent tomorrow afternoon discussing how to navigate without a compass. There was a book of star charts he ought to consulte. Not that they would be a huge amount of use in the middle of the day. And, he fancied, he may even have made a friend. He had certainly spent time in the company of people who did not violently hate him. Perhaps he could be tolerated. The new lieutenant coming aboard would put him out of his place as the newest member of the crew, even if the newest lieutenant seemed to have a reputation as a battle hardened naval veteran. There was one more person to bounce between to try and dilute his neediness.

He stood up, found his way back to his berth. Two figures were lying in the half-darkness, utterly oblivious to whatever was happening around them. One was above him, Styles. The sub lieutenants’ steward. The second figure must be Clayton, dead to the world. He pulled his housewife off his bed and made his way up to the head for a shave.

As he lathered up, he considered the other sub lieutenants. One in particular. He tried to cast his mind back to the conversation in the gunroom with the signalmen, the one which took place almost exclusively as he was making tea. _Someone_ who was expecting to be promoted had been passed over. Everyone seemed to view it as a bit of a snub, albeit a well deserved one. He and Archie were out of the picture. Could it have been Clayton? Would Archie and the signals have been confident enough in his sleep habits to feel they could talk about him, in public, completely without inhibition? Perhaps, but also perhaps not. He recalled how Archie and Clayton had spoken with each other. Had embraced when he first came on board. It seemed highly unlikely that Archie could have two such totally separate facets of a personality. How could he keep them apart from each other for so long? Although, he hadn’t contributed very much to that particular conversation. Planning to relay it later, maybe?

But then there was the way he had teased MacKenzie. So playful, without a single note of malice. So confident in how it would be received. A relationship like that couldn’t be based on falsehood, could it?

That left two. Hether and Simpson. Horatio seemed reasonably confident in which one was most deserving of doubt.

There had been something else, as well. A decisional catalyst. _Tensions_ , he seemed to recall Keene saying. He coupled this with Archie, with his _tough couple of weeks_.

Of course, the ship had also been at anchor for a week at least. They’d lost one man and just that night lost another. They’d lost a sub lieutenant, a berthmate. Horatio recalled how troubled Archie had seen by the discussion of Lowe’s… body over their dinner. He was reading far too far into things, he decided. People weren’t thought experiments. Mostly for the reason that they kept changing their minds and being generally unmanageable. More’s the pity.

He dried his face, acted on a function of nature. The ship was lit more dimly for the night time hours, and although more muted it was still unmistakably a living, breathing vessel. He could feel it throb under his feet with the water. He could hear the electricity crackle, the men moving behind him and on top of him. Footsteps, a sudden explosion of laughter. A clink of glass or chains. He compared it back to Kent, to Tunbridge Wells or Bromley. The utter silence of the country night, or the slight fizzing of the streetlamps in a genteel suburb. Nobody out on the streets after nightfall. The occasional rattle of a cab or purr of an engine, the far off soporific thrum of a train. Compared to that, this was deafening. Bright. Everything he could hear or see was amplified by the superstructure of the ship. He thought of him, this time last night. In his borrowed bed in a seashore hotel, too tied in knots to sleep. Then he _had_ slept, so soundly he barely had time to throw everything in his sea chest. The women in the VAD uniforms, who were probably full naval officers by now. His desperate, undignified scramble onto the deck. His first time seeing a half jack, seeing a ship up close. He was surprised, still, by how dull and functional they were.

He opened the berth door quietly and sat on the end of his bed, unlacing his boots and removing his heavy tunic and tie, hanging them on the dress hook at the end of the bed. He took off his shirt, lay down in his undergarments and felt rather cold.

He thought one last time of the noise of the ship, and realised that he preferred it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol sorry chadd
> 
> GUESS WHOM IS APPEARING IN THE NEXT CHAPTER!!
> 
> SO in my limited understanding of early 20th century watchstanding, there are two teams (port and starboard) who tag team a watch every four hours. These teams are split into sub teams (first and second). Starboard 1st do one, pass to Port 1st; pass to Starboard 2nd; pass to Port 2nd; pass to Starboard 1st etc. If that isn't how it works, that is how it works on this particular strain of fictional ship. Any ghosts reading please hmu and review my terminology
> 
> XO - Executive Officer (usually First Lieutenant)
> 
> also.... poop deck, amirite lads?


	10. Chapter 10

He was woken in the night by what sounded like a bag of post being dropped. In his half asleep state, he attempted to get out of bed to investigate, found that he was trapped and thought he’d been buried alive. A few more moments of panicked wakefulness revealed that he had, in fact, tried to get out of bed the wrong way and collided with the bulkhead. After almost pulling his curtain from its runner to escape the oncoming sense of doom, the post bag morphosed itself into Styles getting up to tend to the middle watch. He lay there and listened to the sleepy tenor of voices, getting steadily louder as they warmed into wakefulness. He considered making some sort of noise to indicate that he was, in fact, awake, and would be appreciative of some peace and quiet. It seemed like an end which may make him unpopular. Worst case, it would open him up as a confirmed bastard and a viable target. He opted to lie there in silence instead. The steady panting motion of the ship was beginning to push itself to the back of his mind. It was much like being on a train, Horatio thought. Once on the train, you don’t dedicate every waking minute to thinking about how fast the train is or where it goes. You are simply on a train. It was exactly the same principle. Yet on a ship.

 

He must have fallen asleep, because next he was aware his curtain was open and what passed for light was streaming in. Archie was standing in front of the single mirror, tying his tie. Styles was sat on the floor, propped up against Horaatio’s bedpost working off his boots. He looked up as Horatio came to.

“Awake, are you sir?”

“Yes, thank you Styles.” He swung his legs over the side of his bed and was at once grateful for his decision to keep his socks on. The deck was rough and bruisingly cold, textured with some sort of grit to make it less of a hazard. It would take the skin off his bare feet. He sat there for a moment, trying to get his head together.

He checked his watch. He hadn’t taken it off before he went to sleep. He had tried to school himself in the habit of sleeping with it on after he had passed out of Dartmouth, anxious that he shouldn’t be caught unawares if he was suddenly startled awake in the night. It was finally beginning to feel more natural to have it on, although he fancied he may soon need a new strap. 07:32.

“Sleep well did you, Horatio?” asked Archie, folding his collar down over his tie and pulling on his tunic.

“Yes, thank you Archie. “Horatio stretched, cracking out his back. “Yourself?”

“Passably.”

“I’ve just finished laying out breakfast in the gunroom, sir,” said Styles, who was still on the floor. He had both of his legs stretched out in front of him and his eyes closed. “I hope you don’t mind me opening your curtain. I put so much effort into getting the bloody thing ready I didn’t want you to oversleep and miss it.”

Horatio blinked. He supposed “Thank you, Styles,” was the proper response. He gave it. Somehow, he had assumed it was Archie who had tried to get him ready for the day. It was summative of the gentle forethought that he had come to associate with his new friend. It almost felt like a… loss.

“Don’t wait for me, Archie,” he said, standing up at last. “I’ll see you in there.”

“Are you sure?”

Horatio tried to smile. He hoped that it looked right, first thing in the morning. “Of course.”

Mornings had never been Horatio’s forte. Even as a child; where most were prone to getting up with the birds, he had remained dead to the world until he was manually awakened for some task or other from the age of six. Those days, his duties had consisted of ‘being in clothes’ and ‘being on time’. These days they were rather more unseemly. He wondered what he had found so repellent about them then.

He mediated this as he changed his socks. He was still to be in uniform and to be at a certain place at a certain time. This time, there was even a vague air of productiveness. A dining hall. Inevitably starch-heavy institutional food. The company of the same men every day, day in and day out. The worries that somebody would discover the truth about himself and reveal him for the fool and the imposter that he was. The Navy was very similar to school, in a lot of ways.

Perhaps more than is healthy, he thought bitterly. The two experiences could end up being far more similar than he would like them to.

He recalled his previous, uncharacteristic bout of positivity last night. He may just have to make the effort to have episodes like that more often.

He took care in putting on the rest of his uniform. His shirt and tunic had weathered the night well. His trousers had a crease in them, but he supposed that would have to be borne. Styles was still completely perpendicular.

“Anything I can do for you, Mr Styles?” he asked. Still unable to quash the urge of manners, even when they did go against decorum.

“No, thank you Mr Hornblower,” replied Styles, sounding bored. Perhaps he expected it of Horatio.

Horatio brushed some stray hairs off his sleeve and checked the mirror. The wool of the tunic really did make every little thing cling. Its dark colouring didn’t help discretion.

His hair itself was passable. Perhaps slightly too long for regulation length. He would just have to side with Archie and hope that it didn’t break the seal of his mask when they had a gas drill. Even as a prolific and notorious worrier, even he would count against the likelihood of a gas attack next to the Isle of Wight.

The gunroom was almost full to capacity, of men in various stages of their day. Hether had just come off duty, propping himself up on his left arm and looking for all the world like he had fallen asleep. There were two cups of coffee beside him.

‘Breakfast’ was laid out on the sideboard, consisting of coffee and some pieces of toast. On a hotplate sat some eggs, their yolks yellow and powdery. An array of sauces and preserves lined up next to it. The tea urn was bubbling faithfully away. Styles must have refilled it in the night. Horatio, for whom food had never been a primary concern, decanted some coffee into a mug and nabbed a slice of toast. A tin of jam and an earthenware pot of marmite, both sticky with residue from their respective spreads. He decided he couldn’t face anything too sweet first thing in the morning.

To his surprise and joy, milk and sugar were not a compulsory part of the brewing of coffee. He started spreading marmite on his toast.

“Are you having that without butter?” asked Archie, who was eating a scrambled egg between two slices of bread. Hether opened his eyes sleepily. “I knew you’d be the type,” he said accusingly.

“Have done with everything,” he said, not willing to go into why his schooling had managed to put him off it so comprehensively.

Archie nodded, seemingly satisfied. It was particularly daring to eat an egg in wool, thought Horatio. Even with a sponge clean, it was unlikely to come off completely. He had run afoul of a notorious egg banjo once and had no interest in repeating it. He wasn’t enough of a fan of eggs for it to be worth the risk-reward ratio. Although it could very well be the only hot item he’d be served for quite some time. He drank his coffee instead.

Archie finished his banjo while Horatio drank his second cup of coffee, and was well on the way to making another to take to his watch station with him. To his dismay, Archie had tried to converse with him over breakfast, a thought which could barely cross his mind before one o’clock. It was a struggle enough to get himself to fulfil all the functions that he had to. He couldn’t afford to take social cues into the fragile equation.

Archie seemed to understand. He and Horatio left for their watch together, both with coffees. Horatio was beginning to understand how a watch station could become so cluttered. He’d have to leave it in some semblance of order.

He bid farewell to Archie and entered his station to find Bathurst and Danvers already deep in conversation about a gash. An alarm pinged inside him.

“Ah, Mr Hornblower!” said Bathurst, turning himself towards the door. “Just the man. I hear you’ve managed to ingratiate yourself with the top brass.”

“Have I, sir?” Horatio asked.

Bathurst stood up and stretched himself up like a cat, the palms of his two hands pressing up on the deckhead. “Talk of the lieutenants’ meeting. We usually just decide how’s best to fuck with the ratings for the day, but we ended up having an actual topic of conversation all thanks to you and your bloody maths.”

“Oh?” he remembered himself. “Sir?”

“Something about how wishing all OOWs could be like you when they were installed somewhere. Showed all of us useless bastards up, you did.”

Horatio reddened.

“Don’t do it again,” said Bathurst, handing Horatio the logbook. “Not a lot in there that will come as a great surprise.” Bathurst took the log away and flicked it back a page, coming to rest on a note made after Horatio had come off watch.

“Look here. Entry about new officer coming aboard. Fifth Lieutenant replacing Chadd. Well, Chadd’s been officially removed. If the officer comes aboard while you’re on watch, it’s crucial you make a note of it Hornblower, you hear? Man’s had a bit of a show of it, from what I’ve heard.”

Horatio nodded. “Yes sir. Two of the big shows, I hear.”

There was the briefest lapse, during which Horatio was sure he could feel Bathurst’s eyes sliding to look at him. “Yes,” he said, just too soon for it to have become worthy of note. “Quite the shows.”

Horatio bit the inside of his cheek and nodded sagely. He had come off like a fool, he knew.

“Anyway,” Bathurst snapped the book shut with faux cheeriness. “All yours now Hornblower. Not a lot happens early morning, unless it’s already happened by now. Much in the galley?”

Horatio fumbled, unsure of where the junior and senior officers’ galley differed. “Eggs and bread in the gunroom this morning, sir.”

“Oh, wonderful,” said Bathurst, with a mute twist of the lips. “I suppose I’ll last. Oh, hello Danvers.”

Danvers dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Morning, sir. Lieutenant Hornblower. Gerry.”

“Mornin’,” replied Bathurst’s signaller, looking on the verge of collapse.

“Now a good time is it, sir?” asked Danvers, evidently more attuned to the intricacies of picking up watches than Horatio. Horatio made up for it by looking at Bathurst with what he hoped a degree of authority.  Whether intuitively or through protocol, he obliged.

“Sure enough, signalman. Be alright, Hornblower?”

Horatio tightened his jaw. “Yes sir.”

Bathurst sent him a wink. “Good. See you on the other side.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Horatio. He and his signalman - Preston? - left. Horatio sat at the console. Danvers seemed to be doing very little.

Horatio thought he might have to say something before Danvers said, “That new fifth lieutenant is expected any moment now, sir. You think he’ll report down here?”

Horatio twisted his mouth, not knowing if this was an attempt at conversation or a warning of what was to come.

“I don’t know, Danvers. I can’t imagine why he would.”

“Might want to make himself known, sir,” said Danvers without missing a beat. “Might want to show you who he is.”

“Yes,” said Horatio, trying his best to be without a hint of irony. “Maybe he will.”

 

*

 

He did.

And Horatio had not been expecting him. Neither him himself as a concept, or him as a whole. Fifth Lieutenant Bush was more or less Horatio’s age exactly, or so it seemed from his appearance. He was dark haired and smiling. He appeared in the watch room almost without fanfare, simply the Captain’s steward knocking on the door and opening it. The new lieutenant beamed as he saw what he saw, and Horatio couldn’t think why. Danvers seemed not to notice.

Horatio nodded his head and doffed his cap. The new lieutenant did the same to Horatio.

He noted it down in the logs nonetheless. Not the doff, but the appearance. The man. The lieutenant. He seemed so eager it would have been a shame not to.

That friendly face. Could be that he was a war-hardened veteran? That he had seen Dogger Bank and Heligoland?

Everyone had seen Dogger Bank. Everyone on this _ship_ must have seen Dogger Bank. For all the Horatioy and/or the defeat it entailed.

Dogger Bank itself had been a strange affair. It wasn’t the first time a battle was held over the hazardous little sandbank between Hertfordshire and Denmark. 1696 and, if Horatio wasn’t mistaken, 1781 too. So his naval studies had told him. Small battles in smaller, siller wars. All skirmishes over kings of kingships and principalities. All the families marrying each other. The Dogger Bank incident, ten years or so ago, of course. The Russians mistaking the fishing craft for Japanese torpedo boats in that brief, spectacular war they’d had. _We had almost gone to war over that,_ Horatio thought. How strange time was.

A big sandbank, though. They had thought it was more or less Pleistocene. The last glacial period had put paid to that, and the area of New Dogger was making itself known in reply.

Not that they were close to New Dogger, and not that it had proven itself to be anything other than a huge red herring when planning for combat manoeuvers. New Dogger was not inherently dangerous. It had simply been tarred with the same brush as many other ‘new’ things from the period.

 _Besides_ , thought Horatio. _We had always known about the Dogger Bank. It isn’t as if it sprung itself on us._

No, he thought to himself in reply. It isn’t.

The battle itself had been a relatively nondescript affair.

Heligoland had been a walkover by comparison. After the bombings inf Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby they hadn’t had to try and make the men want to fight. Room 40 had come through. Not that, having seen the tail end of it at Dartmouth, the battle itself seemed to be that decisive. It had boosted morale, Horatio remembered. Against the Germans. Naval battles were usually short. It was the long, prolonged areas of heavy gunfire you needed to beware. The vibrations which upset them. Although those vibrations travelled so much faster at sea.

Horatio had done the workings out over and over many times ago. The casualty rates and why they were. The Army was so much more than the Navy, and why that was. But when a ship went down, it went down. It was better than being in an airship or an aeroplane; but what was worse, really? Dying on impact or drowning in salt water?

Horatio had done his research. He knew salt water was the worst way to drown.

They (as he and everyone else referred to them) did not tend to make themselves known at sea. At any rate, there were protocols for if they did. The new E Classes, for one. Salt water was, after all, the worst way to drown.

He - wondered. But then he knew he wondered. Wondering [sic] lonely as a cloud, he thought with a sense of humour that he hated. Everyone wondered the same. Who had seen. Who had heard. Who had smelt. They knew all the others; who touched, who tasted. They knew what came after. But the thought of what came before…

Horatio couldn’t think.

“Alright, sir?” asked Danvers.

Horatio started; checked his watch and realised it was over an hour into his watch time and he hadn’t made a note.

“Yes, thank you Danvers,” he said, eager to keep up decorum. And then, “Yourself?”

“Aye,” said Danvers warily. “Not bad.”

Horatio bit is tongue and focused on his log. What could he write. He had seen the new fifth and made an ostentatious note of it. What else? The compasses? Half a degree off from where they were in the logs. He updated the reading. Then he remembered maths, and wondered if he should do some. The readings had changed since the new officer came on, he realised. And then he remembered correlation versus causation, and how the docking of a pilot boat would make them list. The angle was a natural occurrence.

That, and how far could the Sperrys be trusted anyway?

He thought on that until his shift had ended, by which point he was too bewildered to make sense of  how much time he’d passed and also how quickly time had passed while he was wishing it away.

His first four hour watch. Four hours.

His notes… seemed satisfactory. They covered at least three pages, taking into account his wide margins and underestimation of the lateral width of an A5 page. Cambridge had been tough on him.

Half a page an hour seemed worthy, especially considering the complication of mathematical formulae. The letters. They complained about the letters so often, he remembered, at school. Still. They didn’t have to now. Half of them were dead.

He supposed he should meet Bush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy lads I'm still trucking!! Technically this is Chapter 10: Part One as it will almost certainly be revised and elongated in this next week. EXCITINGLY I have been up to Things in my unauthorised absence and signed the contract for my first novel!! So if you're interested in the Russian Civil War... keep yourself posted :eyes:


	11. Chapter Eleven

He handed over the watch, ceding what little he had written under the guise of quality over quantity. His relieving officer didn’t seem to care. The eight bells sounded midday. He had an hour and a half until he needed to report up for astro-navigation. He worked out the bells in his head; they restarted at eight and they sounded at half hour intervals. Half past one was three of them. He wondered if it would be worth tracking down a book on star charts, even in the daylight. He wasn’t sure where he would be able to find information on cloud formations at such short notice. There were books on the subject, surely. There must be some on board. Maybe he could borrow one. If he hadn’t left in such a hurry, he may have been able to track down one of his own, or at least found one at Dartmouth. Dartmouth library must be stacked with them.

He knew the rudimentary basics, of course. He knew how to determine the latitude and plot a basic course. A lot of what he knew how to do had been automated before the war. He knew how to do them because when he was a child he had read Treasure Island and wanted to run away to sea. They were still taught, in case there were ever any mechanical difficulties.

The phrase ‘mechanical difficulties’ was used with nebulous ambiguity.

Out of boredom or habitual self-navigation, Horatio found himself back along the gunroom corridor, and propped against the doorframe was a smart figure in a full lieutenant’s uniform. He heard Horatio coming and turned and smiled.

In the omnipotent gloaming of the sub-waterline corridors, Fifth Lieutenant Bush looked much the same as any lieutenant Horatio had met. He was of medium size, medium build and had hair that could be classified on the medium side of dark. He had a wide and easy smile, and he directed it exactly at Horatio.

“Good afternoon, Sub-Lieutenant,” he said. “I believe we’ve met?”

Horatio smiled. “Briefly.”

Fifth Lieutenant William Bush had just passed his lieutenant’s exam. Horatio knew this because Lieutenant Bush told him almost as soon as they’d met. The first thing he’d done had been to take Horatio’s hand eagerly and tell him that all gunrooms looked the same. “Have you noticed?” he asked.

“This is Horatio’s first service,” said Archie probably thinking that he was doing Horatio a favour by sparing him the answer. Horatio didn’t like that he was right.

Bush’s eyes seemed to light up, but it was hard to tell if this was from delight at a new topic of conversation or at the opportunity to cover up his perceived social faux-pas.

“Straight from Dartmouth?” he asked, with his eyebrows as much as his voice. “They must have wanted you! What an ideal ship to begin on! I always did like the half-jacks. They get so much bad press, don’t you think? Far more than they deserve. They’re like a sibling. You can hate them all you like and so can your other sibs, but as soon as anyone else tries to join in they get a sock in the jaw. My last service was a full _Borodino_ , and do you know what? I didn’t like it half as much. Bigger, of course, but with half the soul. I’m sorry, am I speaking too much?”

 _You couldn’t have not known that_ , Horatio thought as Archie smiled and pushed a chair out with his foot. “There’s no need to feel self-conscious, Lieutenant. You’ve got far more to say than most of us.”

Archie. Ever the diplomat.

Bush took the proffered chair. It could have been Horatio’s imagination, but he seemed smaller while he wasn’t talking. He had heard of some strange breed who spoke in earnest when they were nervous. He didn’t imagine he’d ever meet one in the flesh.

With Hether and Simpson on watch and with Clayton doing whatever it was that he was meant to be doing while he and Archie were relieved (Horatio suspected sleep), he sat down at the table as well. Archie and William seemed to have formed a fragile sort of camaraderie, the way that new ice does. Like particles seeking one another out. Horatio knew that they would be friends, and he would have to find another. It was the way of things, it seemed.

But for all Archie’s easiness, Bush seemed on edge. His new position, Horatio thought. He didn’t know how to act as one of them without being one of them. Or worse; he only knew _how_ to act like one of them.

A silence that might have been uncomfortable spread, had Bush not decided to break with protocol and ask, “Did either of you know Mr. Lowe?”

Horatio looked at Archie just as Archie looked at Horatio. There wasn’t a good way to tell someone that their outgoing officer had been found on deck one night, alone with two tongues.

“I knew him slightly,” offered Archie. Not that Horatio could have offered anything. “Seemed like a nice bloke. Not that anyone would - deserve that.”

Bush nodded. Horatio wondered exactly how much he’d been told.

They were all on edge when the door opened and Pete Clayton walked in holding a piece of toast.

“Oh?” asked Archie. “What are you doing up and about so early?”

Pete put the toast in his mouth, shut the door and pulled up a chair in a single motion. “Politeness, Kennedy.” He removed it to offer his hand to Bush. “Sub-Lieutenant Peter Clayton, sir. Pleased to meet you.”

“Fifth Lieutenant William Bush. Likewise. Been here long?”

Pete chewed, a hand over his mouth. “ _Justinian_ for seven months. Just enough to catch the tail end of Dogger Bank. Been in service since last June.”

“Coming up to nine months, Sub-Lieutenant. You’ll be able to try for a full lieutenant’s post soon.”

“Not seen enough action for that I don’t think, sir. Besides, Simpson’s next in line for the deck jump. He’s out on watch at the moment. Make sure we don’t run aground on the Isle of Wight.”

He took another bite of his toast. It was not lost on Horatio that - for the first time in Horatio’s hearing – it wasn’t referred to as the ‘Pile of Shite’.

“Not a lot of action in these parts, I understand?” He phrased it as a question, but they all knew what he had meant. _There’s not much I can do here, is there? What have I done? Have I really got to live here?_

Archie picked it up, with his patrician grace. “Not that we’ve seen, sir. I understand you’ve been through the mill a bit?”

Bush was obviously not a proud man, but Horatio recognised a stroked ego when he saw one. “Just doing my bit,” he demurred. “Besides, it all seems quite ordinary once you get there. You spend so much of your time training for what _could_ happen that when the situation does arise it’s never as bad as you’d think. And it’s not like I’ve seen anything-”

He stopped himself, but the word still hung in the air. _Else_.

“I suppose you’ve heard,” said Clayton. He scratched at some crumbs which had stuck to the table. “Toast, by the way, anyone? The galley’s just done a whole batch, that bread is on the turn.”

“I think we’ll manage, Pete,” said Archie, not taking his eyes off Bush.

Bush smiled tightly. “Yes. It was part of my coming over here that they disclosed exactly what – happened.”

 _And you still came?_ thought Horatio.

“Yet here you are,” said Archie. “A braver man than most.”

A self-conscious smile tugged at Bush once more. _A tic_ , realised Horatio.

“’Brave’ may be the wrong word, Sub-Lieutenant. ‘Foolhardy’, perhaps. It all seems so close, doesn’t it? A duplicator in the Channel.

An unpleasant sensation passed through the gunroom. Bush had just said something he wasn’t supposed to say, and they knew it.

A ‘duplicator’. Bush must be a Naval man. There were so many terms thrown around so liberally that it was often the most lurid, striking ones that got picked up. Not that there was ever much to pick up, literally or metaphorically. It reminded Horatio of the papers which had stalked Jack the Ripper into infamy. All sound, all fury. Signifying – in the end – nothing.

And yet picked up they were. Earlier, before the War had got going in earnest, the Home Office had decided that they couldn’t keep the story at an arm’s length and had devised a several pronged beast to attack with. The first one had been to offload as much as they could to the Ministry of Defence, it seemed. Whatever they couldn’t manage went to the Foreign Office. No unsubstantiated claims or deliberately misleading headlines, op-eds or otherwise were to be published without being signed off on threefold by either the FO or the MoD, whichever academic was closest at the time and the Home Office itself. Any budding stories or witness accounts were to be investigated by a member of the Home Office and the Natural History Museum before the journalists were allowed within fifty feet of the case. Supposedly. It was all very Defence of the Realm.

Secondly, there was the matter of nomenclature.

Not that such a field existed. Whatever was found – or whatever was left – had given an indefinite and ambiguous way of grouping whatever it was they were dealing with that wasn’t Jerry. By this point, Jerry were seen as rather an imbuggerance than anything else. The names being thrown around by the press had been far too panic-worthy to be allowed by-the-by. Horatio remembered by. The Deboner. Striator. Bleeders. The Puppeteer. Most of them inaccurate and hurriedly assigned, reflecting very little of what had actually happened (or, reflecting what had happened without the appropriate context. Horatio couldn’t parse how context would make those names better). Each name was gained from each victim. They didn’t know what had caused it. They couldn’t. One thing? Many of them? Where, and how? The more anaemic, objective labels foisted by the Home Office tried to temper this. Horatio didn’t know if William was using them to try and quell their fears or because he was just that much of a naval man.

The Duplicator. _The Mimeo_ , he remembered. Not from anywhere he knew. A sheep farmer in Otago had lost some of his flock over a cliff, and those that came back came back with too much of them. When was this? He’d still been in school. Five, six years? _The Mimeograph_. That had been one of the very, very first, as he remembered it. Thinking back, it couldn’t have been. They’d had names for them by then. That, and they hadn’t even been aware of how much worse things could be until 1913.

The Mimeograph. It sounded so playful. A child’s silent picture film.

Somewhere, over time, over change and over the War, that name had become the Duplicator. Named because it duplicates. It doesn’t duplicate well.

“Well,” said Archie, checking his watch. “It’s all very-”

Whatever he was going to say, he never got a chance to finish. Three things then happened at once. Firstly, Clayton’s crumb-wrangling boiled out of hand and finessed with him knocking his whole, uneaten slice onto the deck head. There was no great tragedy in that. Secondly, the ten bells sounded. One o’clock. Thirdly, Styles appeared at the door. Horatio hadn’t seen the steward since he was woken up by him this morning. He assumed he’d gone to bed.

“Begging your pardon, sirs, but you’re needed out on deck.”

Pete slid his piece of toast as far away as it could go with his foot. Archie and Bush were already almost out of their seats.

“Is there a problem, Styles?” Clayton asked.

Styles’s face remained impassive. “You might say that, sir. It looks like Jerry wants to take things up a notch. Captain’s out on deck now. You’ll all want to hear this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here he is!!!!!!!!!!!!!


End file.
